Guido van Rossum wrote:
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Adam Olsen <rhamph@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 5:09 AM, Lie Ryan <lie.1296@gmail.com> wrote:
Is % interpolation deprecated? I've never heard of that... There's no plans to remove it in the near future, so it's not deprecated, and there's no problem using it when it's convenient.
However, .format() obsoletes it. .format() is significantly more powerful for reasons just like this. There's no reason to add new features to % interpolation with .format() around.
I thought the plan was to start deprecating % in 3.1 and remove it at some later release (maybe 3.3). Or did I miss a reversal on this?
Judging by responses on comp.lang.python deprecating % will make a lot of people deeply unhappy. Personally, my own feeling is that they're (mostly) just objecting to change, but they do make some good points. In a later post, Guido wrote: "Without deprecation as the stick I doubt that they will bother to even try [format]." I think you under-estimate just how much many programmers like to play with shiny new tools. I installed Python 2.6 specifically so I could try format. My conclusion is that it is a nice, powerful *heavyweight* solution for text formatting. It's great for complex tasks, but it's hard to beat % for simple ones. -- Steven