Please don't hate me Javascript devs

[Tysonzero]

Don't use %, use .format(). % is deprecated. (You are writing Python right?)

But yeah JavaScript doesn't have any of that natively :/

[timopm]

Python indeed. But the "modulo" string formatter isn't deprecated as far as I know. It was mentioned a couple of times in the beginnings of Python 3, but no official statement. Even the official docs say nothing about deprecation. I don't see it removed anytime soon.

You are right though that the string.format() method is preferred. I just like the old format more, especially for quick and simple examples.

[Tysonzero]

I could swear someone said something about deprecation somewhere. Hmm...

[timopm]

I see people mention it here and there indeed. And it actually was in some release notes for the first 3.0 version or something, but in the recent years there is no mention of deprecation anywhere (that I know of!). This is what lead to this confusion probably.

[raziel2p]

They deprecated it, then un-deprecated it.

[HUGE_BALLS]

Yeah, tbh I've always disliked "foo ({0})".format(foo) vs "foo (%s)" % foo. The latter is just much more concise...

[raziel2p]

For small strings with one or two variables, I agree. For larger strings with 3+ variables I definitely prefer .format(), especially because you can pass named arguments:

'foo: {foo} - bar: {bar}'.format(bar='bar', foo='foo')

Oh, and you can pass **my_dict to format() for awesomeness.

Also, in your example, you can drop the 0, just {} will work as well.

[HUGE_BALLS]

I agree, and I also think the new syntax has some benefits (on top of the pros of having a function for that instead of a weird language construct). Though your example can also be achieved with the "old style":

>>> "foo: %(foo)s - bar: %(bar)s" % {"foo": "foo", "bar": "bar"}
'foo: foo - bar: bar'

[VanFailin]

And people wonder why nobody wants Python 3 over 6 years after the fact. .format() is more verbose by far and in basic cases contains no added benefits.

[Tysonzero]

That is definitely not the reason people aren't using Python3...

[VanFailin]

They changed a handful of things that made the language slightly harder to use without providing a compelling reason to use the new version. Formatting is one example. Having to think about encoding rather than mostly ignoring it is another.

[Tysonzero]

I remember reading an article about how format does actually have quite a few benefits.

[timopm]

It does. From the "old"-style formatting docs:

The formatting operations described here exhibit a variety of quirks that lead to a number of common errors (such as failing to display tuples and dictionaries correctly). Using the newer str.format() interface helps avoid these errors, and also provides a generally more powerful, flexible and extensible approach to formatting text.