[Python-ideas] Custom converters in str.format() and f-strings

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Currently str.format() and f-strings support three converters. 
Converting is specified by the "!" character followed by a letter which 
denotes the converter.

s: str()
r: repr()
a: ascii()

In some cases it would be useful to apply other converters. One obvious 
example is escaping special characters ("&", "<", ">", "'" and '"') for 
XML and HTML. Other applications may need other converters, for example 
escaping special characters (like \xff) for Telnet, or escaping non-BMP 
characters for displaying on Tk widget, or escaping delimiters and 
special characters for shell, or translating to other language.

I do not think that it is practical to provide additional standard 
converters for all above cases, but what if create a special registry 
similar to registries for encodings and error handlers and allow a user 
to register custom converters? We could extend str.format() and 
f-strings to accept arbitrary letters after "!", or maybe even allow 
multi-character names of converters.

It is less important for f-strings because you can use arbitrary 
expressions, but even in this case f"Hello, {name!x}!" or f"Hello, 
{name!xml}!" looks better than f"Hello, {html.escape(name)}!" or 
f"Hello, {x(name)}!".