The prin* Family

This is really a note to myself but I’ll bet many of you are in the same boat. When I want to print something in Elisp, I usually use format but sometimes one of the prin* functions is really what I need. The problem is that I can never remember exactly what they do. What, for example, is the difference between princ, print, and prin1?

This post is meant to be a cheat sheet for the family. Although it’s not really part of the prin* family, I’ve included pp as well because I always forget about it.

• prin1
  Output a printed representation of the argument with quoting. Output will be readable if possible.
• prin1-char
  Return a string representation of the argument, which must be a character.
• prin1-to-string
  Return a string representation of the argument with quoting. Like prin1 but returns the string rather than outputting it. Output will be readable if possible.
• princ
  Output the printed representation of the argument without quoting.
• princ-list
  Print all arguments with princ followed by a newline. OBSOLETE: Use mapc and princ instead.
• print
  Output the printed representaton of the argument with newlines around it. Output will be quoted and readable if possible.
• print-buffer
  Paginate and print buffer contents.
• print-diary-entries
  Print a hard copy of the diary display.
• print-help-return-message
  OBSOLETE: use help-print-return-message instead.
• print-region
  Paginate and print the region contents.
• pp
  Output a pretty-printed representation of the argument with quoting. Output will be readable if possible.