String formatters with variable argument length

[sp1d3rx at gmail.com]

How do you know which ones to use? Your best bet is to write a handler
for the TypeError and give a meaningful error message.

Fredrik Tolf wrote:
> 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