Python string formatting

Show string formatting from several other languages?

Percentage Style Formatting¶

Python supports C’s printf-style formatting using percentage prefixed format specifiers. For example, the format specifier d is used for formatting integers, so the expression 'I have %d candies.' % 7 would return the string 'I have 7 candies.'.

The syntax for this style of formatting follows a structure like the below:

<string-expression> % <single-format-value-or-tuple-of-multiple-values>

Here’s a few examples:

>>> 'I have %d candies.' % 7
'I have 7 candies.'
>>> 'I am %d and my sister is %d.' % (15, 13)
'I am 15 and my sister is 13.'

Notice that when there’s more than one values for formatting, we provide them as a tuple. But when it’s a single value, we provide the value directly. Of course, if we wanted, we could use a tuple even when there’s a single value:

>>> 'I have %d candies.' % (7, )
'I have 7 candies.'

So far, we’ve been looking at the %d specifier, but additionally we have %f for floating point values, %s for strings etc. The full list can be seen at the official documentation on this topic.

Note that giving a value of the wrong type to a specifier may raise an exception. It is usually a good idea to ensure the format specifier’s type matches the values being passed in. The following table illustrates this point where we try to format a few specifiers with values of different types:

We can see that the format specifiers try to interpret the given value in their type.

• format modifiers like %03d
• named specifiers
• implemented with __mod__

New Style Formatting (Using str.format)¶

• The format function (including supporting custom objects on it, f-strings)

The f-strings¶

• can be used with raw string modifier as well