[Python-Dev] string formatting and i18n

[Antoine Pitrou]

Le lundi 05 septembre 2005 à 16:52 +0100, Gareth McCaughan a écrit :
> ... and should add: Of course it's usually seen as being about
> output more than about formatting, but in fact if you want
> to do what Python does with "%", C with "sprintf" and
> Common Lisp with (format nil ...) then the Right Thing in C++
> (in so far as that exists) is usually to use << with a string
> stream.

Uh, what about internationalization (i18n) ?
In i18n you can't avoid the need for parameterized strings.
For example I want to write :
	_("The file '%s' is read only") % filename
not :
	_("The file") + " '" + filename + "' " + _("is read only")

because the splitting in the second form will not translate correctly
into other languages. You *have* to supply the whole non-splitted
sentence to the translators.

The bottom line, IMHO, is that there are frequent uses that mandate a
nice and easy to use formatting operator. Python has it, let's not
remove it.

Regards

Antoine.