Eric Smith wrote:
This code works on 2.6 and 3.0:
 >>> format(1+1j, '10s')
'(1+1j)    '

That's because format ends up calling object.__format__ because complex doesn't have its own __format__. Then object.__format__ calls str(self) which returns '(1+1j) '. So the original call basically turns into "format('(1+1j) ', '10s')".

Guido pointed out this should have been:

"""That's because format ends up calling object.__format__ because complex doesn't have its own __format__. Then object.__format__ calls str(self) which returns '(1+1j)'. So the original call basically turns into "format('(1+1j)', '10s')".""" (I had inserted the spaces added by str.__format__ too early.)


We discussed this at the sprint.

We agreed that we'd just allow this specific issue with complex formatting to possibly break existing uses in 2.7, as it did in 3.1. While that's unfortunate, it's better than the alternatives.

The root cause of this problem is object.__format__, which is basically:

def __format__(self, fmt):
  return str(self).__format__(fmt)

So here we're changing the type of the object (to str) but still keeping the same format string. That doesn't make any sense: the format string is type specific. I think the correct thing to do here is to make it an error if fmt is non-empty. In 2.7 and 3.2 I can make this a PendingDeprecationWarning, then in 3.3 a DeprecationWarning, and finally make it an error in 3.4.

Eric.

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