One important skill in Python programming is the use of formatting strings. Here’s a little snippet to assist – but mainly to remind me in a handy place where I won’t forget it.
This post, I must admit, is mainly for my benefit. I am in the progress of teaching myself Python (version 2), and I’m currently looking at formatting strings. I have seen different operators such as ‘%s’ and ‘%d’ but have not seen a simple table / explanation on what the different string operators are and in what context to use them. The info also took me ages to find too!
A very simple example of string formatting is shown below:
print “My name is %s and my age is %d years!” % (‘Tom’, 23)
Here are the various options available with the % output string. I hope it assists you also.
| Format Symbol | Conversion |
|---|---|
| %c | character |
| %s | string conversion via str() prior to formatting |
| %i | signed decimal integer |
| %d | signed decimal integer |
| %u | unsigned decimal integer |
| %o | octal integer |
| %x | hexadecimal integer (lowercase letters) |
| %X | hexadecimal integer (UPPERcase letters) |
| %e | exponential notation (with lowercase 'e') |
| %E | exponential notation (with UPPERcase 'E') |
| %f | floating point real number |
| %g | the shorter of %f and %e |
| %G | the shorter of %f and %E |