NOTE: All the code in this tutorial can be quickly tested at the REPL using the command lein repl to start a REPL to test with.
One of the first things you learn when learning clojure is print and println . For example,
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(println "Hello world!") |
That’s probably the first Clojure program you ever wrote. Maybe you wrote this variation.
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(print "Hello world!") |
Because println or print are the first ways learned of displaying output in Clojure, most Clojure developers continue using them when debugging code. Nothing wrong with that. But sometimes it is better to use a more specialized tool.
In steps the prn and pr commands. These two commands are tailored for printing objects. At first glance, they appear to work the same as print and println . However, they actually show more information in some instances.
If using print or println , the \n in the following code quietly gets replaced by the action of a new line being printed.
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(pr "Hello\nworld!") |
When pr or prn are used, the two characters \ and n are displayed instead of an actual new line. This is very handy when hidden characters are fowling up your layout, or needed to be visible when debugging code.
Final note: The only difference between pr and prn , is that prn prints a new line after the objects it is printing out.