Format Strings -- Real vs. Expected Behaviour

[Erik Max Francis]

Brad Bollenbach wrote:

> Shouldn't Python be smart enough to know that even without ()'s around
> the
> whole thing, this is all one line (therefore avoiding the current
> odd/unexpected IMHO behaviour with the format string)? After all, I'm
> telling it this much by using the line continuation character "\"
> aren't I?

It has no trouble telling that it's all one line.  Its problem is you
are not following operator precedence.  You'd get the same error if it
were all on one line:

     print "%s " + "%s" % ("hello", "world")

The problem is that % has higher precedence than +, so it interprets
this as

     print "%s " + ("%s" % ("hello", "world"))

which isn't what you meant.

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