[Python-Dev] transitioning from % to {} formatting

[Guido van Rossum]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 6:29 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Has anyone considered the idea of having the string % operator
> behave intelligently according to the contents of the format
> string?
>
> If it contains one or more valid %-formats, use old-style
> formatting; if it contains one or more valid {}-formats,
> use new-style formatting.
>
> Ambiguous cases could arise, of course, but hopefully they
> will be fairly rare, and raising an exception would point
> out the problem and allow it to be fixed.

Hm... The % operator already does too much guessing: if the string
contains exactly one %-format, the argument may be either a size-1
tuple or a non-tuple, otherwise it has to be a size-N tuple, except if
the %-formats use the %(name)X form, then the argument must always be
a dict. It doesn't sound to me as if adding more guesswork is going to
improve its reliability.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)