Question

for host in platforms:
    f = open(host, 'w')
    f.write('define host {\n')
    f.write('    host_name            {}\n'.format(host))
    f.write('    alias                {}\n'.format(host))
    f.write('    display_name         {}\n'.format(host))
    f.write('    address              {}\n'.format(str(socket.gethostbyname(host))))
    f.write('    use                  linux-server\n')
    f.write('    register             1\n')
    f.write('}\n')

Is there a better way? Is there a simple way to format all these string but only do one write method call? If the above is considered best practice that’s fine, just seems like it could be prettier some other way.

Answer 1

You can use named substitutions in a long, triple-quoted string.

def print_host(host, address):
    f = open(host, 'w')
    f.write("""define host {{
        host_name            {host}
        alias                {host}
        display_name         {host}
        address              {address}
        use                  linux-server
        register             1
    }}\n""".format(host=host, address=address))

print_host("myhost", "10.10.10.10")

But note that you must double your curly braces to escape them here.