Printing a percent sign

[John Machin]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <1159263309.699677.301130 at m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>, John
> Machin wrote:
>
> > Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> >> In message <1159230293.270822.50390 at d34g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>, John
> >> Machin wrote:
> >>
> >> > 1. Reasoning: How do you get a literal "'" into an SQL string constant?
> >> > How do you get a literal "\" into a Python string constant? How do you
> >> > get a literal "$" into some *x shell command lines? Do you detect a
> >> > pattern?
> >>
> >> None of which applies to escaping of % characters in format strings.
> >
> > What I had in mind was:
> >
> > where surname = 'O''REILLY'
> > install_dir = "C:\\Python25"
> > ...
> > print "The interest rate is %.2f%% p.a." % (rate * 100.0)
> >
> > the common pattern being that the problem character is doubled.
>
> Which doesn't apply to the "$" character in *nix shell command lines.

I'll take your word for it; it's been quite a while :-) *Something* in
the dim dark past worked like that; I thought maybe I was thinking of
m4, but that gets by without doubling.

Your score so far is 1 out of 3; you have two more to go to match your
original assertion  "None of which applies...."

Cheers,
John