[Python-3000] PEP - string.format (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sat Apr 22 10:58:40 CEST 2006

On 4/22/06, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

Removing string %-formatting would be a backwards compatibility nightmare. I doubt there's a Python program on the planet that would continue working if it was removed (I know most of mine would break in verbose mode). Even those which continued to work would likely break if all commented out debugging messages were uncommented.

The same is true for some other changes considered, e.g. the new I/O stack, all-unicode strings, and dict views.

Py3k exists to break backwards compatibility. A format() method added to strings could be added to 2.6. Defining format() in terms of % would be a long-term disaster IMO.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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