Newbie can't figure out documentation practices

[Fernando Perez]

sismex01 at hebmex.com wrote:

>> The only other area where you're likely to cry a bit is proper string
>> interpolation, which sucks in python.
>>
> 
> Awww, c'mon, don't scare away the newbies!  Besides, it's
> really a matter of perception; for me, Python's string
> interpolation is excellent, specially after working
> with shell and perl strings. Python's intrpolation feels
> more first-world-like, more "formal", instead of perl's
> and sh's.

Ok, time for my yearly rant on interpolation ;)  Can anyone tell me how to
do cleanly something like (using perl-like syntax to indicate my intent,
this isn't real code):

print """
var x = $x
var y = $y
var self.z = $self.z
fun x+y+self.z = $x+$y+$self.z
var z from other object = $other.z
z from self plus other = $self.z + $other.z
"""  % ????

I can't use locals() b/c it won't see the members of self and other. I can't
update locals() with self/other.__dict__ because they'll clobber each
other.

In general the only solution I've been able to find is to make a bunch of
local temporaries to hold all of my object's data plus assorted other stuff
in locals() as non-dotted names.  That strikes me as ugly and unpythonic,
but I've failed to find a better alternative.  I'd love to be enlightened.

I vaguely recall some nice class-based trick I saw a while back, but I'd
like a more 'standard' mechanism.  Ka-Ping Yee's Itpl class seems wonderful
to me, but all attempts to push that have failed so far.  

I've been told to write the above with tons of print statements (one per
line) and even more quotemarks:

print 'x=',x,'self.z=',self.z,...

But I _hate_ that kind of output for anything longer than two or three
lines.  It's nearly impossible to read smoothly something which is say 50
lines of the above with many variables.


Cheers, and TIA,

f.