[Python-Dev] converting the stdlib to str.format

[Steve Holden]

Nick Coghlan wrote:
> Greg Ewing wrote:
>> Nick Coghlan wrote:
>>
>>> - remove support for passing a single value to a format string 
>>> without wrapping it in an iterable first
>>
>> But won't that clobber a large number of the simple
>> use cases that you want to keep %-formatting for?
> 
> Note the part of the proposal that allows *any* iterable on the right 
> hand side rather than the current insistence on a tuple. So the 
> single-value use cases can be boxed easily with a list.
> 
> To my mind salvaging %-formatting requires removing the ambiguity over 
> whether or not the right hand side will be iterated over.
> 
But then this breaks code where iterables are intended to be output 
using a single %s format specifier, for example. I don't see why this 
would be regarded as helpful. To avoid breakage I'd rather keep the 
%-formatting ability as it is, and label it a legacy feature, rather 
than "salvaging" it. It's going to be too tricky to convert using 2to3 
otherwise.

regards
  Steve
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