[Python-Dev] [Python-checkins] cpython: Issue #11049: adding some tests to test.support

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:31:54 +0300
Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I wasn't aware of '%a' at all? It doesn't appear to be documented, and
> Python 2.6 doesn't support it:
> 
>     ValueError: unsupported format character 'a' (0x61) at index 1
> 
> If it's new, it should at least be documented in library/stdtypes with the
> other formatting operations.

It's new in 3.x and maps to the ascii() builtin:

>>> ascii('hé')
"'h\\xe9'"
>>> '%a' % 'hé'
"'h\\xe9'"

The docstring for ascii():

    ascii(object) -> string
    
    As repr(), return a string containing a printable representation of
    an object, but escape the non-ASCII characters in the string
    returned by repr() using \x, \u or \U escapes.  This generates a
    string similar to that returned by repr() in Python 2.

Regards

Antoine.