[Tutor] output formatting question

[tom arnall]

i have read --  with what i think is a reasonable amount of attention
-- all of the doc' i can find about string formatting in python. for
the life of me, i cannot see how any of the other methods do more than
you can do with, to use a concrete example:

    print "Here %s a number: %3d" % ("is",  1)

    #OR:

    s =   "Here %s a number: %3d" % ("is", 1)
    print s

what am i not getting?