% string formatting - what special method is used for %d?

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Sat, 10 Dec 2016 06:06 pm, Veek M wrote:

> When we do:
> 
> print '%s %d' % ('hello', 10)
> 
> what special method is being invoked internally within the string-
> format-specifier?

%d requires the argument to be an int, or able to be converted to int using
the __int__ special method.


py> class X(object):
...     def __int__(self):
...             return 42
...
py> "%d" % X()
'42'



> format() invokes format__
> print invokes __str__

print actually invokes __str__ or __repr__, whichever is available.



> I'm basically trying to make sense of:
> 
> raise TypeError('urkle urkle %s' % list(dictionary))
> <=> raise TypeError('urkle urkle %s' % [ key1, val1, key2, val2 ]


The raise TypeError part of the code is irrelevant to your question. You
should always simplify your code to only the part that is relevant. 

raise TypeError(some_string)

behaves the same regardless of how some_string is made.


> So, the % operator reads the format specifier and notices %s and
> therefore calls __str__ in the list class to figure out how to represent
> [ key1, val1, key2, val2 ].
> 
> However what if I use %d? How do the other format specs work?


The format specifiers are similar to these:

%s => str(obj), which ends up calling __str__ or __repr__

%r => repr(obj), which ends up calling __repr__ or __str__

%c => chr(obj), or obj must be a string of length 1

%d %i %u => int(obj), which ends up calling __int__

%x %X => int(obj), then convert to hexadecimal

%o => int(obj), then convert to octal

%e %E %f %g %G => float(obj), which ends up calling __float__

%% => a literal % sign





-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.