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[Python-Dev] transitioning from % to {} formatting

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Sat Oct 3 19:35:29 CEST 2009 
Paul Moore wrote:
> 2009/10/1 Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com>:
>   
>> It's tangential, but in the str.format case you don't want to check for just
>> '{asctime}', because you might want '{asctime:%Y-%m-%d}', for example.
>>
>> But there are ways to delay computing the time until you're sure it's
>> actually being used in the format string, without parsing the format string.
>> Now that I think of it, the same technique could be used with %-formatting:
>>     
>
> Still tangential, but it seems to me that this discussion has exposed
> a couple of areas where the logging interface is less than ideal:
>
> - The introspection of the format string to delay computing certain
> items (Eric's suggestion may be an improvement here).
> - The "call str() on any non-string object to get a format string" API
> (which precludes string subclasses).
>   

Calling str on non-string objects to get a format string does not 
(prima-facie) preclude string subclasses:

 >>> class X(str): pass
...
 >>> class Y(object):
...  def __str__(self):
...   return X('foo')
...
 >>> a = Y()
 >>> type(str(a))
<class '__main__.X'>

Michael

> I suspect other APIs will exist with similar issues once the whole
> question of supporting multiple format syntaxes gets wider
> publicity...
>
> Paul.
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>   


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