Pre-PEP: Refusing to guess in string formatting operations

[Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de)]

Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
> The `string formatting operation`_ - ``format % values`` - has a wart.
> In the face of non-tuple values, it assumes a singleton tuple around
> it. 

I don't think I can remember ever being tripped up
by this. I don't see it as enough of a problem to
be worth changing anything -- particularly not as
drastic as adding a new operator or deprecating
any existing one.

If you find it a problem, you can easily write a
small function which behaves the way you want:

 >>> def fmt(s, *a):
...  return s % a
...
 >>> fmt("abc %s def", 1)
'abc 1 def'
 >>> fmt("abc %s def", (1, 2))
'abc (1, 2) def'
 >>> fmt("abc %s def %s ghi", 1, 2)
'abc 1 def 2 ghi'

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg