[Python-3000] PEP - string.format

[Guido van Rossum]

On 4/22/06, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>    Removing string %-formatting would be a backwards compatibility nightmare.
> I doubt there's a Python program on the planet that would continue working if
> it was removed (I know most of mine would break in verbose mode). Even those
> which continued to work would likely break if all commented out debugging
> messages were uncommented.

The same is true for some other changes considered, e.g. the new I/O
stack, all-unicode strings, and dict views.

Py3k exists to *break* backwards compatibility. A format() method
added to strings could be added to 2.6. Defining format() in terms of
% would be a long-term disaster IMO.

--
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)