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I don't understand this restriction, and there isn't a rationale for it in the PEP (other than "you can already use numeric formats", which doesn't explain why it's undesirable to have it anyway.) It is extremely common in existing 2.x code to use %s for anything, just like people use {} for anything with str.format. Not supporting this feels like it would be problematic for porting code. Did this come up in the earlier discussions?