Awkward format string

[Chris Mellon]

On 8/1/07, beginner <zyzhu2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 1, 11:31 am, "Chris Mellon" <arka... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/1/07, beginner <zyzhu2... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> >
> > > In order to print out the contents of a list, sometimes I have to use
> > > very awkward constructions. For example, I have to convert the
> > > datetime.datetime type to string first, construct a new list, and then
> > > send it to print. The following is an example.
> >
> > >         x=(e[0].strftime("%Y-%m-%d"), e[1].strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))+e[2:]
> > >         print  >>f, "%s\t%s\t%d\t%f\t%f\t%f\t%d" % x
> >
> > > e is a tuple. x is my new tuple.
> >
> > > Does anyone know better ways of handling this?
> >
> > You seem to be doing quite complicated things with your magical e
> > tuple. Do you have some specific aversion to classes?
>
> e is not complicated. It is a record that have 7 fields. In my program
> a function outputs a list of tuples, each is of type e, and now I just
> need to send them to a text file.
>
> I have no problem using classes and I do use them everywhere. But
> using classes does not solve my problem here. I will probably find
> myself doing:
>
> print  >>f, "%s\t%s\t%d\t%f\t%f\t%f\t%d" % (x.field1..strftime("%Y-%m-
> %d"), x.field2..strftime("%Y-%m-%d"), x.field3, x.field4, x.field5,
> x.field.6, x.field7)
>
> This is also tedious and error-prone.
>

If you ever need to write this more than once you're doing it wrong.
I'm not sure what's "tedious and error prone" about specifying the
format of your data file.