Question

Someone has recently demonstrated to me that we can print variables in Python like how Perl does.

Instead of:

print("%s, %s, %s" % (foo, bar, baz))

we could do:

print("%(foo)s, %(bar)s, %(baz)s" % locals())

Is there a less hacky looking way of printing variables in Python like we do in Perl? I think the 2nd solution actually looks really good and makes code a lot more readable, but the locals() hanging around there makes it look like such a convoluted way of doing it.

Answer 1

The only other way would be to use the Python 2.6+/3.x .format() method for string formatting:

# dict must be passed by reference to .format()
print("{foo}, {bar}, {baz}").format(**locals()) 

Or referencing specific variables by name:

# Python 2.6
print("{0}, {1}, {2}").format(foo, bar, baz) 

# Python 2.7/3.1+
print("{}, {}, {}").format(foo, bar, baz)