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Hello i am a very very beginner coder. Iโm in a beginner python class and I feel like the text books just throws stuff at concepts. Why are fโstrings important? If Iโm understanding it right I feel like the same output could get accomplished in a different way.
I was trying to make a, silly program in which you can do some random things. I used arguments (%)in the past, but it's a bit hard to write like the identification of the variable, like there is so much types (%s, %f, %2f, %d, %g, %e...) and I want to take the easiest to write or the easiest to debug.
here are some examples of using each one:
using (%):
name = "Imaginary_Morning"
age = 13
print("This profile is called %s and it has %d years old." % (name, age))
using (f"string"):
name = "Imaginary_Morning"
age = 13
print(f"This profile is called {name} and it has {age} years old.")
using (.format()):
name = "Imaginary_Morning"
age = 13
print("This profile is called {} and it has {} years old.".format(name, age))To answer your first question... .format just seems more sophisticated in many ways. An annoying thing about % is also how it can either take a variable or a tuple. You'd think the following would always work:
"Hello %s" % name
yet, if name happens to be (1, 2, 3), it will throw a TypeError. To guarantee that it always prints, you'd need to do
"Hello %s" % (name,) # supply the single argument as a single-item tuple
which is just ugly. .format doesn't have those issues. Also in the second example you gave, the .format example is much cleaner looking.
Only use it for backwards compatibility with Python 2.5.
To answer your second question, string formatting happens at the same time as any other operation - when the string formatting expression is evaluated. And Python, not being a lazy language, evaluates expressions before calling functions, so the expression log.debug("some debug info: %s" % some_info) will first evaluate the string to, e.g. "some debug info: roflcopters are active", then that string will be passed to log.debug().
Something that the modulo operator ( % ) can't do, afaik:
tu = (12,45,22222,103,6)
print '{0} {2} {1} {2} {3} {2} {4} {2}'.format(*tu)
result
12 22222 45 22222 103 22222 6 22222
Very useful.
Another point: format(), being a function, can be used as an argument in other functions:
li = [12,45,78,784,2,69,1254,4785,984]
print map('the number is {}'.format,li)
print
from datetime import datetime,timedelta
once_upon_a_time = datetime(2010, 7, 1, 12, 0, 0)
delta = timedelta(days=13, hours=8, minutes=20)
gen =(once_upon_a_time +x*delta for x in xrange(20))
print '\n'.join(map('{:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}'.format, gen))
Results in:
['the number is 12', 'the number is 45', 'the number is 78', 'the number is 784', 'the number is 2', 'the number is 69', 'the number is 1254', 'the number is 4785', 'the number is 984']
2010-07-01 12:00:00
2010-07-14 20:20:00
2010-07-28 04:40:00
2010-08-10 13:00:00
2010-08-23 21:20:00
2010-09-06 05:40:00
2010-09-19 14:00:00
2010-10-02 22:20:00
2010-10-16 06:40:00
2010-10-29 15:00:00
2010-11-11 23:20:00
2010-11-25 07:40:00
2010-12-08 16:00:00
2010-12-22 00:20:00
2011-01-04 08:40:00
2011-01-17 17:00:00
2011-01-31 01:20:00
2011-02-13 09:40:00
2011-02-26 18:00:00
2011-03-12 02:20:00