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Asked: 2026-05-14T22:05:25+00:00

When formatting a string, my string may contain a modulo % that I do

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When formatting a string, my string may contain a modulo "%" that I do not wish to have converted. I can escape the string and change each "%" to "%%" as a workaround.

e.g., 

'Day old bread, 50%% sale %s' % 'today!'

output: 

'Day old bread, 50% sale today'

But are there any alternatives to escaping? I was hoping that using a dict would make it so Python would ignore any non-keyword conversions.
e.g., 

'Day old bread, 50% sale %(when)s' % {'when': 'today'}

but Python still sees the first modulo % and gives a: 

TypeError: not enough arguments for format string
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You could (and should) use the new string .format() method (if you have Python 2.6 or higher) instead:

    "Day old bread, 50% sale {0}".format("today")

    The manual can be found here.

    The docs also say that the old % formatting will eventually be removed from the language, although that will surely take some time. The new formatting methods are way more powerful, so that’s a Good Thing.

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