[issue39694] Incorrect dictionary unpacking when calling str.format

[Akos Kiss]

Akos Kiss <akosthekiss at gmail.com> added the comment:

Re: Eric

I had a code where `'sometemplate'.format()` got a dictionary from outside (as a parameter, not from `locals()`), and that dictionary had `None` as a key. Actually, I wasn't even aware of that `None` key until I tried to execute the same code in PyPy where it failed with a `TypeError`. That's when I started to dig down to the root of the incompatibility.

Now, my code has a workaround to have an `if key is not None` filter in the comprehension that constructs the dict. (I'm not sure whether it can be called a workaround, since this is how it should have been written in the first place. It turns out I was just (ab)using an implementation detail / deviation.)

So much about real-world use cases.

There is one more use case that comes to my mind, but it is admittedly theoretical (for now, at least). If I ever wanted to patch/wrap/mock `str.format` then the wrapped version would behave differently from the built-in version (throw an error when the original does not). But this is hypothetical at the moment because I "can't set attributes of built-in/extension type 'str'" and don't have the time to experiment with complex mocking/patching/wrapping approaches.

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue39694>
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