Format specification mini-language for list joining

[Paul Rubin]

Tobia Conforto <tobia.conforto at gmail.com> writes:
> Now, as much as I appreciate the heritage of Lisp, I won't deny than
> its format string mini-language is EVIL. ... Still, this is the
> grand^n-father of Python's format strings...

Without having yet read the rest of your post carefully, I wonder the
particular historical point above is correct.  Python's format strings
are pretty much the same as C's format strings, which go back to the
beginnings of C in the 1970's, maybe even to some forerunner of C, like
maybe FOCAL or something like that.  It's possible that Common Lisp's
format strings came from some earlier Lisp, but Common Lisp itself was a
1980's thing.  Maybe some Lisp historian would know.