String formatters with variable argument length

[Fredrik Tolf]

I've been trying to get the string formatting operator (%) to work with
more arguments than the format string requires, but I can find no way to
do that. For example:

>>> "%i" % 10
'10'
>>> "i" % 10
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: not all arguments converted during string formatting

The thing is, I want to get format strings from the user, and I don't
want to require the user to consume all the arguments. docs.python.org
doesn't seem to have any clues on how to achieve this, and I can't think
of what to google for.

Could it be as I fear, that it is impossible?

Fredrik Tolf