[Python-Dev] PEP 215 redux: toward a simplified consensus? (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Tue, 26 Feb 2002 15:14:10 +1300 (NZDT)

I'm not sure I like the idea of using $ as the character for prefixing interpolated strings. Somehow

a = "Mynameis"My name is "Mynameisname"

looks confusing. I think it has something to do with the fact that $ is appearing both inside and outside the quotes, making my visual parser worry that the quotes are misplaced.

Also, it uses up one of the three precious not-yet-used characters, and I think we should keep those for some future time when we really need them. We don't need one for this -- there are plenty of operators available that haven't yet been used on strings.

I suggest '^', since it does a nice job of suggesting "inject stuff into this string". We can have both a prefix form for compile-time interpolation:

a = ^ "My name is $name"

and an infix form for run-time interpolation:

a = "My name is $name" ^ dict

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+