[Tutor] here's a printf() function

[Sha vais]

I'm a C / C++ programmer (in a weak kind of a way, I think) and I'm learning 
Python (and loving it).  I was slightly irritated by the automagical spaces 
between elements and ending carriage return that Python's built in "print" 
function does, so I made a printf() function that I thought I'd share.  
(This list probably gets one of these every other week or so?  Lol..)

Here's the module file, sf_utils.py ---

"""
Some basic formatted string output functions to make things easier
for someone who is used to C.
"""

from sys import stdout

def printf(format, *args):
    "Write the arguments to standard out in the specified format."
    s = format % args
    stdout.write(s)  # (no added spaces or ending carriage return, woohoo!)

def fprintf(file, format, *args):
    "Write the arguments to the given open file in the specified format."
    s = format % args
    file.write(s)

def sprintf(format, *args):
    "Return a string with the arguments concatenated in the specified 
format."
    s = format % args
    return s

----

That's it, hehe.  Ez as Py.  Now I can do stuff like...

----
>>>from sf_utils import printf
>>>printf("%s!  There's a %s fly in my %4.5fth bowl of %s!\n", 
>>>"Argh","flipping", 3.14159236, "goo")
Argh!  There's a flipping fly in my 3.14159th bowl of goo!
----

Kinda silly and pointless, I guess, but then, kinda maybe not.

~Shavais

p.s.  I was in search of the py_compile.compile(filename,...) function 
(which I gratefully found, whew) and I came across an old post by someone 
who thought "is" was not behaving properly and thought it was a bug in the 
interpreter.  Remember that "is" is not a value comparison.  If it were, how 
would you see if the variable x is referring to the same memory space (the 
same object) as the variable y? (While processing complex data structures, 
for example.) That's what "is" does.  If you use "is" interchangeably with 
"==" you will make nasty bugs.  Your program might behave one way in .py 
form, and another in .pyc form, for example.  (Or one way on Monday, and 
another on Tuesday, for that matter, lol.)  What they really mean by "object 
identity" (to a C programmer like me) is "pointer equality."  Every Python 
variable is a pointer.  '==' tests to see if the values at the memory 
addresses that the pointers are pointing to are the same.  'is' tests to see 
if the pointers are pointing to the same memory address.  Two completely 
different tests.  Two different python variables, who's values are the same, 
may refer to the same memory location, or they may not.  If you use "is" 
when you mean "==", don't blame the interpretter for producing strange 
results, hehe.

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