New string formatting in Python

I am not sure why i18n is a big deal, let another library deal with it.

Whatever, I have the choice not using this feature after it is accepted and implemented. Their PEP discussion on email always ended up in tangential. Problem I always have with string manipulation is dealing with long string, which for coding style I'd split into multiple +, and thus using format is pretty ugly.

Is it really worth updating all the Python syntax formatting and analysis code out there just to save one character on an operator? I don't think it's a good tradeoff.

That's because some languages have complicated changes in the text depending on eg the number of things: not just singular/plural, but more complicated. Russian is one example.

It also has little in common with i18n, the use cases differ too much. Perhaps in the future someone can figure out how to bring them together, but not today.

    fmt("{a} {b} {c}", a=a, b=b, c=c)

    fmt("?a ? ?", a=a, b, c)

That being said this ship has sailed. I guess I just take a more conservative approach to syntax changes than most.

Update: a bit sad to see my votes fluctuating wildly on this post. Please don't use votes to support or disagree with me: that's not what they're for. Please vote only based on whether you find this relevant.

    with open('template.txt') as f:
        template = f.read()
    formatted = template.format(**values)

  _(f"English {a} words {b} here {a}")

    >>> very_long_var_name_1 = 'spam'
    >>> very_long_var_name_2 = 'ham'

    >>> # Explicit but tedious and doesn't help readability:
    >>> print('{very_long_var_name_1}: {very_long_var_name_2}'.format(
    ...       very_long_var_name_1=very_long_var_name_1,
    ...       very_long_var_name_2=very_long_var_name_2))
    spam: ham

    >>> # Explicit but somehow feels dirty:
    >>> print('{very_long_var_name_1}: {very_long_var_name_2}'.format(
    ...       **locals()))
    spam: ham

    >>> # Still fits on one line. I think f prefix makes intent clear.
    >>> print(f'{very_long_var_name_1}: {very_long_var_name_2}')
    spam: ham

    #python
    import re
    m = re.search('(a.+)(d.+)', 'abcdef')
    if m:
      print(f"{m.group(1)},{m.group(2)}")

    #perl
    if('abcdef' =~ /(a.+)(d.+)/){
      print "$1,$2";
    }

Also "Simple is better than complex", "practicality beats purity" and "Readability counts".

The zen is not the bible, you don't get to cherrypick the stuff you want to make your case.

Plus, they are just guide lines, in the end, you have a debate in the python dev mailing list with reasonable people making their case.

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0498/#no-use-of-globals-...

You could argue that's not a good enough reason, but it's there.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like Python to have better, more obvious, more concise string formatting. However the last time we had this discussion, it was about str.format() and how it was going to be awesome and don't worry modulo-formatting will go away.

Turns out it did not; modulo formatting is still there because why would it be removed. This is history repeating itself - are you actually baffled that some people learn from past mistakes?

from __future__ import string_interpolation

:)