Why do this?

[Matthew Warren]

> 
> | Now, I started programming when I was 8 with BBC Basic.
> 
> Hey, likewise! (Except I was 12 when it came out!)

I think it came out before I was 8, and I started out with print and
input. Not sure if that's 'real' programming - I don't think I graduated
to ifs and thens and gotos and gosubs for a while.. Uhm, Or was it 'def
proc' et al for BBC Basic? Brain holes leaking old stuff out :)

> | Print "There are "+number+" ways to skin a "+furryanimal
> 
> perfectly sound Python code, as far as it goes, altho' obviously
> "Print" is spelt "print" in Python, and if that number is in fact
> a number it'll need to be str ()-ed first.

Blame outlook and AutoCaps. If number were a number I would write

print "There are",number,"ways to skin a "+furryanimal

..something I like about python, 'cause having been pathalogically
avoiding %'s etc.. I have learned to hate going "string "+str(number)+"
string"

> 
> | But nowadays, I see things like this all over the place;
> | 
> | print("There are %s ways to skin a %s" % (number, furryanimal))
> 
> The outermost brackets are (at the moment) unnecessary in python,

Oops :)

> altho' print is slated for replacement by a function in Python 3.0
> at which point they'll be necessary.

? Why do that, point me at a PEP if required and I'll read it :)

> 
> number = 3
> animal = "cat"
> print "There are %d ways to skin a %s" % (number, animal)
> 
> | Now I understand there can be additional formatting benefits when
> | dealing with numbers, decimal places etc.. But to me, for 
> strings, the
> | second case is much harder to read than the first.
> 
> I think what it comes down to is just what's most readable in the
> situation in which you're using it. Imagine a rather longer
> string, and one where <number> and <animal> are not short names,
> but calls to some function. Sometimes, since %s will call __str__
> on anything it's passed, it's a quick way to get a string 
> representation
> of a more complex object, which you'd otherwise have to str () at
> least.
>
> Also, for me, substitution often reads more naturally because you're 
> not breaking the string up with lots of " + xxxx + "..." + 
> yyy + "...  
> stuff. Again, though, depends on what your code looks like, and how 
> readable you find it. Certainly, I wouldn't advocate *pathologically* 
> avoiding the "%s" % blah style, but it needn't always be the right
> thing.
>

I am a big fan of easily human readable meaningful names for things, to
the extent that I will quite readily use var or function names
ThatCanBeQuiteLongAndExplanatory() For me, it helps retain the
readbility say, when breaking up a string with lots of + xxx + "etc..
Etc.." + lalala

>It may be easier 
> to use the 
> dictionary form of the substitution then, eg:
> 
> print """
> Long string with %(valueA)s and %(valueB)s and %(valueC)s embedded in
> it at some distance from the end...
> ...
> """ % dict (valueA=1, valueB="blah", valueC=datetime.datetime.now ())
> 
> Obviously that dict would likely be defined elsewhere, or could even
> be locals (). Once you get to this stage, though, you might want to 
> start looking at templating toolkits like Cheetah, Genshi or any of
> the many others knocking around.
>

That's something I wasn't aware of, and I think I'll try if I find
myself going

"something"+dict['thingummy']+" red ones and "+dict['colour']+" ones"

The dict substitution does feel a bit easier to read compared to the
concatenation, because of the dict['    ']  noise.

Matt.




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