Question

I have a script that creates a random string and I want to turn that in to a placeholder.
Here’s my script:

import random

def randstring(length=10):
    valid_letters='abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvqxyz1234567890'
    return ''.join((random.choice(valid_letters) for i in xrange(length)))
print randstring(15)
#prints something like "qkxfdqp5jockf6n"

I want to be able to turn the created value of “randstring(15)” into a conversion specifier such as %s or %d.
This should be simple but I can’t figure it out.
Thanks.

Answer 1

when I run that it spits out a string, qkxfdqp5jockf6n for example. I want to take that be able to do something like print “Hello, %s” and it say “Hello, qkxfdqp5jockf6n”

%s is not magic, and it doesn’t magically know what you want to substitute in. It’s a placeholder. You substitute your string into it the same way you would substitute any other string:

text = 'Damien'
def my_function():
    return 'Damien'

# All of the following will print "Hello, Damien":
print 'Hello, %s' % 'Damien'
print 'Hello, %s' % text
print 'Hello, %s' % my_function()

There is no “turning” of anything “into” a conversion specifier.