Formatting strings, preference or is one better than the other?

Question

Hello,
Before I signed up for the Techdegree here on Treehouse I was already learning Python and the way that I was formatting strings looked like this
name = "Bob"
print(f"Hello, {name}")
The way here on Treehouse is the .format() way. Is there any advantage to this? This question may seem trivial but I just found the original way that I learned more intuitive and easier.
Thanks.

andren · Accepted Answer

There are actually about 4 ways of doing string interpolation in Python:
 %-Formatting (https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting)
str.format() (https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#formatstrings)  (the way Treehouse teaches)
 Template-String (https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#template-strings)
 F-String (https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#f-strings)  (this is the way you were originally taught)
Which technique you want to use is mostly a matter of preference, but one thing to be aware of is that F-Strings are a pretty recent addition to the Python Language. It was introduced in Python 3.6 which I'm pretty sure came out after most of the Treehouse courses was recorded.
Treehouse also appears to be running Python 3.5 in their console and for the code challenges so F-Strings are not really usable within Treehouse. As for outside Treehouse you can use them but be aware that you are then limiting your code to only run on Python 3.6 and up.

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Luke Hayes

Luke Hayes

Formatting strings, preference or is one better than the other?

1 Answer

andren

andren