f-string are awesome, but there are times when i like to continue to use format method. For example when i want to simplify the string and not pollute it with a bunch of expressions. Sometimes its nice to split them off. The string can get a little messy, i think.
However everyone instructs to use f strings over format. IF at any point format method was to become obsolete, then i would agree to get comfortable using f string all the time. But i dont think that is going to go. In that case we are going to have f strings and format method side by side.
Im just curious as to what others think? I remmeber a discussion about it when it was new, but nothing much lately.
i'm still looking forward to learning f-string. i can, now that i am upgraded to 3.6.8 system-wide.
i really don't understand why it was done as a data type, instead of regular strings using a function or method to produce a resulting string. or as new features for .format() with a single argument. maybe i want to read an f-string layout from a database, such as for different word order in different languages or different business markets. how can i do that? what if i am dealing with bytes (which have no .format)?
My problem with f-string promotion is that f-strings are fine and dandy if you are not planning on supporting anything before 3.6.
If I look at % then it's still around. I think that .format will also be around for foreseeable future. However there are signs that development of 'convenience' features will be targeted to f-strings.
From Python 3.8 one can do 'print debugging' with f-strings more simpler:
>>> a = 'spam'
>>> b = 'ham'
>>> print(f'{a=} and {b=}') # instead of f'a={a} and b={b}'
a='spam' and b='ham'If you look at controversial
PEP 572 -- Assignment Expressions ('walrus operator') then one can observe that there are f-strings used as examples and no .format method. It can be interpreted subtle indication of focus of Python development.
In my opinion the promotion of f-strings is targeted to beginners. There is no reason not to learn 'the latest and greatest' features of language. Any professional setting is bound to restrictions imposed by existing codebase.
I do advice to use f-string,sometime i do comparisons with .foramt() and other time not.
If it not was better i would not have advice so much,but it's more readable and concise,less prone to error than other ways of formatting.
I use f-string in all i do and never .format() anymore.
ichabod801 Wrote:My problem with f-string promotion is that f-strings are fine and dandy if you are not planning on supporting anything before 3.6.
Yes if planing to support < 3.6 then drop the new stuff,also support of only 3.6+ if not a problem these days.
Eg a lot people use
Black,and very few complain anymore that's it only 3.6+.
Black Wrote:Black can be installed by running pip install black. It requires Python 3.6.0+ to run but you can reformat Python 2 code with it, too.
I'm used to .format() and it works for all versions of python, so I'm unlikely to move to fstrings easily. As far as I understand fstrings, they only save a little typing, but I have more important things to worry about. May be in a few years...
I was wondering if anyone here just stuck with format
Good to know.
a lot of my scripts generate what is call "user data", which is usually a bash script to be run, for instances being launched in the AWS EC2 cloud. these have a lot of variable substitution in them. i have been using .format, but i think f-strings will do well in these. i used to code them as multi-line triple-quoted strings but that was difficult to use with .format() so i switched each line being a single call to a function named ud() with .format() in there. so instead of:
ud("#!/bin/bash")
ud("export JOB='{}'".format(job_id))
ud("mkdir '{}'".format(log_dir_name))
ud("exec &>'{}".format(log_file_name))
...
ud("aws s3 sync '{}' 's3://{}{}'".format(log_dir_name,bucket,s3_prefix)) i can do:
ud(f"""#!/bin/bash
export JOB='{job_id}'
mkdir '{log_dir_name}'
exec &>'log_file_name'
...
aws s3 sync '{log_dir_name}' 's3://{bucket}{s3_prefix}'
""")this is one of the reasons i wanted to get 3.6 or 3.7 running system-wide on my old Ubuntu 16.04 system that had 3.5 system-wide. upgrading to a full fresh install of Xubuntu 18.04 got me several things i wanted, including f-strings for these scripts.
i do expect to still use
.format() in some other situations. but i do expect to migrate to only using f-strings for locally run scripts. stuff i make for others will use
.format() for a very long time.
If you do only simple variable substitution, you can also do it with
.format(**locals()), for example
>>> a = 4
>>> b = 'foo'
>>> c = 'Guido'
>>> "The longest {b} has length {a}.".format(**locals())
'The longest foo has length 4.'
i have done some of that. it gets harder when globals are also involved.
Output:
>>> b = 'foo'
>>> len(b)
4
>>>
i hope that never happens.