Question

I am looking for a clean way to use variables within a multiline Python string. Say I wanted to do the following:

string1 = go
string2 = now
string3 = great

"""
I will $string1 there
I will go $string2
$string3
"""

I’m looking to see if there is something similar to $ in Perl to indicate a variable in the Python syntax.

If not – what is the cleanest way to create a multiline string with variables?

Answer 1

The common way is the format() function:

>>> s = "This is an {example} with {vars}".format(vars="variables", example="example")
>>> s
'This is an example with variables'

It works fine with a multi-line format string:

>>> s = '''\
... This is a {length} example.
... Here is a {ordinal} line.\
... '''.format(length='multi-line', ordinal='second')
>>> print(s)
This is a multi-line example.
Here is a second line.

You can also pass a dictionary with variables:

>>> d = { 'vars': "variables", 'example': "example" }
>>> s = "This is an {example} with {vars}"
>>> s.format(**d)
'This is an example with variables'

The closest thing to what you asked (in terms of syntax) are template strings. For example:

>>> from string import Template
>>> t = Template("This is an $example with $vars")
>>> t.substitute({ 'example': "example", 'vars': "variables"})
'This is an example with variables'

I should add though that the format() function is more common because it’s readily available and it does not require an import line.