[New-bugs-announce] [issue5348] Documentation of format implies only strings and numbers are acceptable arguments

[Mitchell Model]

New submission from Mitchell Model <mlm at acm.org>:

The documentation of format on the builtin functions page should be 
changed from "Convert a string or a number" to "Convert a value".

The documentation begins "Convert a string or a number". This is 
misleading in that format can be called on any value, since there is an 
Object.__format__ and classes can define their own __format__ method. 
PEP 3101 is explicit about all of this and the documentation of 
__format__ ends by noting that "format(value, format_spec) merely calls 
value.__format__(format_spec)". typeobject.c implements 
Object.__format__ with a note about PEP 3101.

Given all of that I don't see why format should be explained as taking a 
string or a number as its first argument.

----------
assignee: georg.brandl
components: Documentation
messages: 82616
nosy: MLModel, georg.brandl
severity: normal
status: open
title: Documentation of format implies only strings and numbers are acceptable arguments
versions: Python 2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.0, Python 3.1

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue5348>
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