[Python-Dev] Status regarding Old vs. Advanced String Formating (original) (raw)

Eli Bendersky eliben at gmail.com
Sun Feb 26 09:40:03 CET 2012

On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:20, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

> I find that strange, especially for an expert Python dev. I, a newbie, > find it far friendlier (and easier for a new programmer to grasp). > Maybe it's because I use it all the time, and you don't?

That is most likely the case. You learn by practice. For that very reason, the claim "and easier for a new programmer to grasp" is difficult to prove. It was easier for you, since you started using it, and then kept using it. I don't recall any particular obstacles learning % formatting (even though I did for C, not for C++). Generalizing that it is easier is invalid: you just didn't try learning that instead first, and now you can't go back in a state where either are new to you. C++ is very similar here: they also introduced a new way of output (iostreams, and << overloading). I used that for a couple of years, primarily because people said that printf is "bad" and "not object- oriented". I then recognized that there is nothing wrong with printf per so, and would avoid std::cout in C++ these days, in favor of std::printf (yes, I know that it does have an issue with type safety).

Not to mention that the performance of iostreams is pretty bad, to the extent that some projects actively discourage using them in favor of either C-style IO (fgets, printf, etc.) or custom IO implementations. This is marginally off-topic, although it does show that an initial thought of deprecating an existing functionality for new one doesn't always work out in the long run, even for super-popular languages like C++.

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