In a dynamic language, why % operator asks user for type info?

[Dan Bishop]

On Jul 16, 7:10 pm, Karthik Gurusamy <kar1... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The string format operator, %, provides a functionality similar to the
> snprintf function in C. In C, the function does not know the type of
> each of the argument and hence relies on the embedded %<char>
> specifier to guide itself while retrieving args.
>
> In python, the language already provides ways to know the type of an
> object.
>
> So in
>
> output = '%d foo %d bar" % (foo_count, bar_count),
> why we need to use %d?
In order to distinguish between, for example:

>>> '%c' % 42
'*'
>>> '%d' % 42
'42'
>>> '%e' % 42
'4.200000e+01'
>>> '%f' % 42
'42.000000'
>>> '%g' % 42
'42'
>>> '%i' % 42
'42'
>>> '%o' % 42
'52'
>>> '%r' % 42
'42'
>>> '%s' % 42
'42'
>>> '%u' % 42
'42'
>>> '%x' % 42
'2a'