How to format a LaTeX string in python?

Question

I\'m writing an application, part of whose functionality is to generate LaTeX CVs, so I find myself in a situation where I have strings like

\\begin{document}
\\         


        

Answer 1

Why won't this work?

>>> output = r'\author{{email}}'.format(email='user@example.org')
>>> print output
\author{email}

edit: Use double curly braces to "escape" literal curly braces that only LaTeX understands:

>>> output = r'\begin{{document}} ... \author{{{email}}}'.format(
... email='user@example.org')
>>> print output
\begin{document} ... \author{user@example.org}

Answer 2

You may not use the new format syntax to avoid escaping the { and }.

That should work:

>>> a = r'''
\title{%(title)s}
\author{%(author)s}
\begin{document}'''

>>> b = a % {'title': 'My Title', 'author': 'Me, Of course'}
>>> print(b)

\title{My Title}
\author{Me, Of course}
\begin{document}

You should use raw strings r'something' to avoid escaping \ as \\.

PS: You should take a look on txt2tags, a Python script to convert t2t formatted text into html, latex, markdown etc. Check the source code to see how these conversions are done.