[Python-ideas] Briefer string format

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 3:52 AM, Ron Adam <ron3200 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The part that bothers me is it seems like the "f" should be a unary operator
> rather than a string prefix.
>
> As a prefix:
>
>       s = f'{spam}{{eggs}}'        # spam
>       s2 = s.format(eggs=eggs)     # eggs
>
>
> As an unary operator:
>
>       s  = ? '{spam}{{eggs}}'    # spam
>       s2 = ? s                   # eggs
>
> (? == some to be determined symbol)
>
> They are just normal strings in the second case.

Except that they can't be normal strings, because the compiler has to
parse them. They're expressions. You can't take input from a user and
f-string it (short of using exec/eval, of course); it has to be there
in the source code.

ChrisA