String formatting in Python 3

Question

Here are the docs about the "new" format syntax. An example would be:

"({:d} goals, ${:d})".format(self.goals, self.penalties)

If both goals and penalties are integers (i.e. their default format is ok), it could be shortened to:

"({} goals, ${})".format(self.goals, self.penalties)

And since the parameters are fields of self, there's also a way of doing it using a single argument twice (as @Burhan Khalid noted in the comments):

"({0.goals} goals, ${0.penalties})".format(self)

Explaining:

• {} means just the next positional argument, with default format;
• {0} means the argument with index 0, with default format;
• {:d} is the next positional argument, with decimal integer format;
• {0:d} is the argument with index 0, with decimal integer format.

There are many others things you can do when selecting an argument (using named arguments instead of positional ones, accessing fields, etc) and many format options as well (padding the number, using thousands separators, showing sign or not, etc). Some other examples:

"({goals} goals, ${penalties})".format(goals=2, penalties=4)
"({goals} goals, ${penalties})".format(**self.__dict__)

"first goal: {0.goal_list[0]}".format(self)
"second goal: {.goal_list[1]}".format(self)

"conversion rate: {:.2f}".format(self.goals / self.shots) # '0.20'
"conversion rate: {:.2%}".format(self.goals / self.shots) # '20.45%'
"conversion rate: {:.0%}".format(self.goals / self.shots) # '20%'

"self: {!s}".format(self) # 'Player: Bob'
"self: {!r}".format(self) # '<__main__.Player instance at 0x00BF7260>'

"games: {:>3}".format(player1.games)  # 'games: 123'
"games: {:>3}".format(player2.games)  # 'games:   4'
"games: {:0>3}".format(player2.games) # 'games: 004'

---

Note: As others pointed out, the new format does not supersede the former, both are available both in Python 3 and the newer versions of Python 2 as well. Some may say it's a matter of preference, but IMHO the newer is much more expressive than the older, and should be used whenever writing new code (unless it's targeting older environments, of course).

Python 3.6 now supports shorthand literal string interpolation with PEP 498. For your use case, the new syntax is simply:

f"({self.goals} goals, ${self.penalties})"

This is similar to the previous .format standard, but lets one easily do things like:

>>> width = 10
>>> precision = 4
>>> value = decimal.Decimal('12.34567')
>>> f'result: {value:{width}.{precision}}'
'result:      12.35'

That line works as-is in Python 3.

>>> sys.version
'3.2 (r32:88445, Oct 20 2012, 14:09:29) \n[GCC 4.5.2]'
>>> "(%d goals, $%d)" % (self.goals, self.penalties)
'(1 goals, $2)'

I like this approach

my_hash = {}
my_hash["goals"] = 3 #to show number
my_hash["penalties"] = "5" #to show string
print("I scored %(goals)d goals and took %(penalties)s penalties" % my_hash)

Note the appended d and s to the brackets respectively.

output will be:

I scored 3 goals and took 5 penalties