Shouldn't %06s zero-pad a string?

[Andrew Dalke]

Tim Daneliuk:
> I'm just curious - what is the rationale' for having this as a string
> method?  i.e., This seems more like a special-purpose feature than a
> generally-needed string operation.  Is there a PEP describing the genesis
> of zfill?

zfill was a function in the string library.  I don't know when it
was added, but there's a usenet post mentioning it in 1994, which
is well before the PEP era.

My guess is it was added because a new module function is
allowed to be non-interesting, and someone wanted it.  Then
when strings had methods, all appropriate functions from that
module were moved to methods, upcasting, as it were, its implied
general-purposeness.

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com