[Python-ideas] Briefer string format

[Guido van Rossum]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 7:57 PM, Eric V. Smith <eric at trueblade.com> wrote:

> On 07/20/2015 01:25 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Perhaps surprisingly, I find myself leaning in favor of the
> > f'...{var}...' form. It is explicit in the variable name.
> >
> > Historically, the `x` notation as an alias for repr(x) was meant to play
> > this role -- you'd write '...' + `var` + '...', but it wasn't brief
> > enough, and the `` are hard to see. f'...' is more explicit, and can be
> > combined with r'...' and b'...' (or both) as needed.
>
> We didn't implement b''.format(), for a variety of reasons. Mostly to do
> with user-defined types returning unicode from __format__, if I recall
> correctly.
>

Oh, I forgot that.


> So the idea is that
> f'x:{a.x} y:{y}'
> would translate to bytecode that does:
> 'x:{a.x} y:{y}'.format(a=a, y=y)
>
> Correct?
>

I was more thinking of translating that specific example to

    'x:{} y:{}'.format(a.x, y)

which avoids some of the issues your example is trying to clarify.

It would still probably be best to limit the syntax inside {} to exactly
what regular .format() supports, to avoid confusing users.

Though the consistency argument can be played both ways -- supporting
absolutely anything that is a valid expression would be more consistent
with other places where expressions occur. E.g. in principle we could
support operators and function calls here.


> I think I could leverage _string.formatter_parser() to do this, although
> it's been a while since I wrote that. And I'm not sure what's available
> at compile time. But I can look into it.
>

I guess that would mean the former restriction. I think it's fine.


> I guess the other option is to have it generate:
> 'x:{a.x} y:{y}'.format_map(collections.ChainMap(globals(), locals(),
> __builtins__))
>
> That way, I wouldn't have to parse the string to pick out what variables
> are referenced in it, then have .format() parse it again.
>

No; I really want to avoid having to use globals() or locals() here.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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