String formatting: % vs. .format vs. string literal

Question

Python 2.6 introduced the str.format() method with a slightly different syntax from the existing % operator. Which is better and for what situations?

Pyt

Answer 1

For python version >= 3.6 (see PEP 498)

s1='albha'
s2='beta'

f'{s1}{s2:>10}'

#output
'albha      beta'

Answer 2

But please be careful, just now I've discovered one issue when trying to replace all % with .format in existing code: '{}'.format(unicode_string) will try to encode unicode_string and will probably fail.

Just look at this Python interactive session log:

Python 2.7.2 (default, Aug 27 2012, 19:52:55) 
[GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-48)] on linux2
; s='й'
; u=u'й'
; s
'\xd0\xb9'
; u
u'\u0439'

s is just a string (called 'byte array' in Python3) and u is a Unicode string (called 'string' in Python3):

; '%s' % s
'\xd0\xb9'
; '%s' % u
u'\u0439'

When you give a Unicode object as a parameter to % operator it will produce a Unicode string even if the original string wasn't Unicode:

; '{}'.format(s)
'\xd0\xb9'
; '{}'.format(u)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
UnicodeEncodeError: 'latin-1' codec can't encode character u'\u0439' in position 0: ordinal not in range(256)

but the .format function will raise "UnicodeEncodeError":

; u'{}'.format(s)
u'\xd0\xb9'
; u'{}'.format(u)
u'\u0439'

and it will work with a Unicode argument fine only if the original string was Unicode.

; '{}'.format(u'i')
'i'

or if argument string can be converted to a string (so called 'byte array')

Answer 3

Python 3.6.7 comparative:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import timeit

def time_it(fn):
    """
    Measure time of execution of a function
    """
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        t0 = timeit.default_timer()
        fn(*args, **kwargs)
        t1 = timeit.default_timer()
        print("{0:.10f} seconds".format(t1 - t0))
    return wrapper


@time_it
def new_new_format(s):
    print("new_new_format:", f"{s[0]} {s[1]} {s[2]} {s[3]} {s[4]}")


@time_it
def new_format(s):
    print("new_format:", "{0} {1} {2} {3} {4}".format(*s))


@time_it
def old_format(s):
    print("old_format:", "%s %s %s %s %s" % s)


def main():
    samples = (("uno", "dos", "tres", "cuatro", "cinco"), (1,2,3,4,5), (1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1), ("uno", 2, 3.14, "cuatro", 5.5),) 
    for s in samples:
        new_new_format(s)
        new_format(s)
        old_format(s)
        print("-----")


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Output:

new_new_format: uno dos tres cuatro cinco
0.0000170280 seconds
new_format: uno dos tres cuatro cinco
0.0000046750 seconds
old_format: uno dos tres cuatro cinco
0.0000034820 seconds
-----
new_new_format: 1 2 3 4 5
0.0000043980 seconds
new_format: 1 2 3 4 5
0.0000062590 seconds
old_format: 1 2 3 4 5
0.0000041730 seconds
-----
new_new_format: 1.1 2.1 3.1 4.1 5.1
0.0000092650 seconds
new_format: 1.1 2.1 3.1 4.1 5.1
0.0000055340 seconds
old_format: 1.1 2.1 3.1 4.1 5.1
0.0000052130 seconds
-----
new_new_format: uno 2 3.14 cuatro 5.5
0.0000053380 seconds
new_format: uno 2 3.14 cuatro 5.5
0.0000047570 seconds
old_format: uno 2 3.14 cuatro 5.5
0.0000045320 seconds
-----

Answer 4

If your python >= 3.6, F-string formatted literal is your new friend.

It's more simple, clean, and better performance.

In [1]: params=['Hello', 'adam', 42]

In [2]: %timeit "%s %s, the answer to everything is %d."%(params[0],params[1],params[2])
448 ns ± 1.48 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

In [3]: %timeit "{} {}, the answer to everything is {}.".format(*params)
449 ns ± 1.42 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

In [4]: %timeit f"{params[0]} {params[1]}, the answer to everything is {params[2]}."
12.7 ns ± 0.0129 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000000 loops each)

Answer 5

As of Python 3.6 (2016) you can use f-strings to substitute variables:

>>> origin = "London"
>>> destination = "Paris"
>>> f"from {origin} to {destination}"
'from London to Paris'

Note the f" prefix. If you try this in Python 3.5 or earlier, you'll get a SyntaxError.

See https://docs.python.org/3.6/reference/lexical_analysis.html#f-strings

Answer 6

Yet another advantage of .format (which I don't see in the answers): it can take object properties.

In [12]: class A(object):
   ....:     def __init__(self, x, y):
   ....:         self.x = x
   ....:         self.y = y
   ....:         

In [13]: a = A(2,3)

In [14]: 'x is {0.x}, y is {0.y}'.format(a)
Out[14]: 'x is 2, y is 3'

Or, as a keyword argument:

In [15]: 'x is {a.x}, y is {a.y}'.format(a=a)
Out[15]: 'x is 2, y is 3'

This is not possible with % as far as I can tell.