Difference between "print" statements and "select" statements , TSQL

Question

 What is the difference between "print" statements and "select" statements when it omces to debugging and watching varibles in the stored procs .....

Answer 1

SELECT statement is part of the ANSI SQL language.
PRINT command is not part of the SQL language, it is used for debugging in T-SQL.
BOL:" Returns a user-defined message to the client.
A message string can be up to 8,000 characters long if it is a non-Unicode string, and 4,000 characters long if it is a Unicode string. Longer strings are truncated. The
varchar(max) and nvarchar(max) data types are truncated to data types that are no larger than
varchar(8000) and nvarchar(4000).
RAISERROR can also be used to return messages. RAISERROR has these advantages over PRINT:
RAISERROR supports substituting arguments into an error message string using a mechanism modeled on the printf function of the C language standard library.
RAISERROR can specify a unique error number, a severity, and a state code in addition to the text message.
RAISERROR can be used to return user-defined messages created using the sp_addmessage system stored procedure."
LINK: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176047.aspx
The SSMS (client software) returns SELECT output to Results and PRINT output to Messages.
The SQLCMD -o (output file) option captures all outputs into one file mixed.
Kalman Toth Database & OLAP Architect
T-SQL Scripts at sqlusa.com
New Book / Kindle: Exam 70-461 Bootcamp: Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012