[Python-ideas] String interpolation again. (original) (raw)

Mike Meyer mwm-keyword-python.b4bdba at mired.org
Fri Jul 23 15:05:04 CEST 2010

On Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:35:40 -0400 Alex Light <scialexlight at gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Andrey Popp <8mayday at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think it's a form of weak typing from languages like PHP, that > allows programmer to make huge amounts of mistakes, that are sometimes > difficult to spot.

It also violates TOOOWTDI.

I agree. but i wouldn't mind if python would start automatically calling str on objects in string sequences if they are not strings. i.e. turn this

notastring = 123 astring = 'this is a string' + notastring #currently throws syntax error to this: astring = 'this is a string ' + str(notastring) they do this in java and it works quite well

I believe the initial quote applies to this form as well. It might work well in Java, but Java isn't Python; there are lots of other differences that make this a lot more tolerable in Java.

The first problem with this kind of thing is that there's no obvious reason why 12 + '34' should be '1234' instead of 46.

Java variables have declared types. This means the above situation can be detected at compile time, and the implicit conversion added then. In Python, you have to do the tests at run time, which will slow everything down.

Further, Java's typed variables means that if you've made a mistake in the type of one of the values, the assignment will be flagged as an error at compile time. Python won't do that, so implicitly fixing the mistake here means you get even further from the error before something happens that reveals it.

Finally, the % operator does that implicit conversion for you if you use %s: a_string = 'this is a string %s' % not_a_string Works just fine as things are now (though the syntax needs tweaking if not_a_string is a tuple).

I think brings it to -4.

<mike

-- Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.

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