Python String Formatting - passing both a dict and string to .format()

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 16:01:48 -0800, Victor Hooi wrote:

>     '{0['cat']} {1} {0['dog']}'.format(my_dict, foo) ...
>     SyntaxError: invalid syntax

It's a syntax error because you are using the same quotes. You have:

    '{0['cat']} {1} {0['dog']}'


which is parsed as:

STR '{0['
NAME cat
STR ']} {1} {0['
NAME dog
STR ']}'

which isn't legal. You can't write:

    "foo"len

either.

As for why you don't need to quote the keys inside the string format min-
language, that is how the mini-language is designed, and it is for 
convenience and to avoid the sort of trouble you're having now.


> Also, is this the best practice to pass both a dict and string to
> .format()? Or is there another way that avoids needing to use positional
> indices? ({0}, {1} etc.)

I'd do it like this:

py> mydict = {'cat': 42, 'dog': 23, 'parrot': 99}
py> '{cat} and {dog}, {}'.format('aardvark', **mydict)
'42 and 23, aardvark'



-- 
Steven