[Python-3000] Please don't kill the % operator...

[Eric Smith]

Ron Adam wrote:
> 
> Martin v. Lo"wis wrote:
>> Bill Janssen schrieb:
>>>> I think most of these points are irrelevant. The curly braces are not
>>>> just syntactic sugar, at least the opening brace is not; the digit
>>>> is not syntactic sugar in the case of message translations.
>>> Are there "computation of matching braces" problems here?
>> I don't understand: AFAIK, the braces don't nest, so the closing
>> brace just marks the end of the place holder (which in the printf
>> format is defined by the type letter).

> So expressions like the following might be difficult to spell.
> 
>       '{{foo}{bar}}'.format(foo='FOO', bar='BAR', FOOBAR = "Fred")
> 
> This would probably produce an unmatched brace error on the first '}'.

Ah, I see.  I hadn't thought of that case.  You're correct, it gives an 
error on the first '}'.  This is a case where allowing whitespace would 
solve the problem, sort of like C++'s "< <" template issue (which I 
think they've since addressed).  I'm not sure if it's worth doing, though:

'{ {foo}{bar} }'.format(foo='FOO', bar='BAR', FOOBAR = "Fred")

On second thought, that won't work.  For example, this currently doesn't 
work:
'{0[{foo}{bar}]}'.format({'FOOBAR': 'abc'}, foo='FOO', bar='BAR')
KeyError: 'FOO'

I can't decide if that's a bug or not.

Eric.