Hi, The string format operator, %, provides a functionality similar to the snprintf function in C. In C, the function does not know the type of each of the argument and hence relies on the embedded %<char> specifier to guide itself while retrieving args.
In python, the language already provides ways to know the type of an object. So in output = '%d foo %d bar" % (foo_count, bar_count), why we need to use %d? I'm thinking some general common placeholder, say %x (currently it's hex..) could be used. output = '%x foo %x bar" % (foo_count, bar_count). Since % by definition is string formatting, the operator should be able to infer how to convert each of the argument into strings. If the above is the case, we could've avoided all those exceptions that happen when a %d is specified but say a string is passed. Thanks, Karthik -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
