[Python-ideas] Briefer string format

[Eric V. Smith]

On 7/25/2015 3:55 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> 
>> On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 10:27 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
>>
>>>> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>>>> I don't think I want this behaviour:
>>>>>
>>>>>     f'{spam}' '{eggs}'
>>>>>     => format(spam) + '{eggs}'
>> […]
>>>
>>>     >>> 'foo\abar' r'lorem\tipsum' 'wibble\bwobble'
>>>     'foo\x07barlorem\\tipsumwibble\x08wobble'
>>>
>>>     >>> type(b'abc' 'def' b'ghi')
>>>       File "<stdin>", line 1
>>>     SyntaxError: cannot mix bytes and nonbytes literals
>>>
>>> […]
>>> Is the proposed ‘f’ prefix, on a fragment in implicit concatenation,
>>> meant to have behaviour analogous to the ‘r’ prefix or the ‘b’
>>> prefix, or something else? What's the argument in favour of that
>>> choice?
>>
>> It *must* work like r'' does. Implicit concatenation must be thought
>> of as letting each string do its thing and then concatenating using
>> '+', just optimized if possible. The error for b'' comes out because
>> the '+' refuses b'' + ''.
> 
> That makes sense, and is nicely consistent (‘f’, ‘r’, and ‘b’ all apply
> only to the one fragment, and then concatenation rules apply). Thanks.

Yes, I think that's the only interpretation that makes sense.

>> I find it a sign of the times that even this simple argument goes on
>> and on forever. Please stop the thread until Eric has had the time to
>> write up a PEP.
> 
> I found this discussion helpful in knowing the intent, and what people's
> existing expectations are.
> 
> Hopefully you found it helpful too, Eric! In either case, I look forward
> to your PEP.

In trying to understand the issues for a PEP, I'm working on a sample
implementation. There, I've just disallowed concatentation entirely.
Compared to all of the other issues, it's really insignificant. I'll put
it back at some point.

Eric.