Prettyprint

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What Does Prettyprint Mean?

In IT, to “prettyprint” something refers to the process of displaying source code or other items in a presentable and attractive way. Prettyprint can involve formatting and style implementations, as well as different types of specialty text settings to display the results of mathematical equations or code output.

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Techopedia Explains Prettyprint

Prettyprint can be done in many different ways. One of the basic implementations is code formatting, which splits blocks of code into individual code lines. Certain tools do this for various programming languages like LISP or C, making the result much more readable and conventional. Prettyprint tools may also change font sizes and styles for individual numbers or letters or pieces of text. The general idea is that results are printed clearly and in a user-friendly way. In some cases, this requires specific modifications of dense, complicated or “hairy” source code.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.