I would like to put an int into a string. This is what I am doing at the moment:
num = 40
plot.savefig('hanning40.pdf') #problem line
I have to run the program for several different numbers, so I'd like to do a loop. But inserting the variable like this doesn't work:
plot.savefig('hanning', num, '.pdf')
How do I insert a variable into a Python string?
See also
If you tried using + to concatenate a number with a string (or between strings, etc.) and got an error message, see How can I concatenate str and int objects?.
If you are trying to assemble a URL with variable data, do not use ordinary string formatting, because it is error-prone and more difficult than necessary. Specialized tools are available. See Add params to given URL in Python.
If you are trying to assemble a SQL query, do not use ordinary string formatting, because it is a major security risk. This is the cause of "SQL injection" which costs real companies huge amounts of money every year. See for example Python: best practice and securest way to connect to MySQL and execute queries for proper techniques.
If you just want to print (output) the string, you can prepare it this way first, or if you don't need the string for anything else, print each piece of the output individually using a single call to print. See How can I print multiple things (fixed text and/or variable values) on the same line, all at once? for details on both approaches.
Using f-strings:
plot.savefig(f'hanning{num}.pdf')
This was added in 3.6 and is the new preferred way.
Using str.format():
plot.savefig('hanning{0}.pdf'.format(num))
String concatenation:
plot.savefig('hanning' + str(num) + '.pdf')
Conversion Specifier:
plot.savefig('hanning%s.pdf' % num)
Using local variable names (neat trick):
plot.savefig('hanning%(num)s.pdf' % locals())
Using string.Template:
plot.savefig(string.Template('hanning${num}.pdf').substitute(locals()))
See also:
Fancier Output Formatting - The Python Tutorial
Python 3's f-Strings: An Improved String Formatting Syntax (Guide) - RealPython
With the introduction of formatted string literals ("f-strings" for short) in Python 3.6, it is now possible to write this with a briefer syntax:
>>> name = "Fred"
>>> f"He said his name is {name}."
'He said his name is Fred.'
With the example given in the question, it would look like this
plot.savefig(f'hanning{num}.pdf')
plot.savefig('hanning(%d).pdf' % num)
The % operator, when following a string, allows you to insert values into that string via format codes (the %d in this case). For more details, see the Python documentation:
printf-style String Formatting
You can use + as the normal string concatenation function as well as str().
"hello " + str(10) + " world" == "hello 10 world"
In general, you can create strings using:
stringExample = "someString " + str(someNumber)
print(stringExample)
plot.savefig(stringExample)
If you would want to put multiple values into the string you could make use of format
nums = [1,2,3]
plot.savefig('hanning{0}{1}{2}.pdf'.format(*nums))
Would result in the string hanning123.pdf. This can be done with any array.
Special cases
Depending on why variable data is being used with strings, the general-purpose approaches may not be appropriate.
If you need to prepare an SQL query
Do not use any of the usual techniques for assembling a string. Instead, use your SQL library's functionality for parameterized queries.
A query is code, so it should not be thought about like normal text. Using the library will make sure that any inserted text is properly escaped. If any part of the query could possibly come from outside the program in any way, that is an opportunity for a malevolent user to perform SQL injection. This is widely considered one of the important computer security problems, costing real companies huge amounts of money every year and causing problems for countless customers. Even if you think you know the data is "safe", there is no real upside to using any other approach.
The syntax will depend on the library you are using and is outside the scope of this answer.
If you need to prepare a URL query string
See Add params to given URL in Python. Do not do it yourself; there is no practical reason to make your life harder.
Writing to a file
While it's possible to prepare a string ahead of time, it may be simpler and more memory efficient to just write each piece of data with a separate .write call. Of course, non-strings will still need to be converted to string before writing, which may complicate the code. There is not a one-size-fits-all answer here, but choosing badly will generally not matter very much.
If you are simply calling print
The built-in print function accepts a variable number of arguments, and can take in any object and stringify it using str. Before trying string formatting, consider whether simply passing multiple arguments will do what you want. (You can also use the sep keyword argument to control spacing between the arguments.)
# display a filename, as an example
print('hanning', num, '.pdf', sep='')
Of course, there may be other reasons why it is useful for the program to assemble a string; so by all means do so where appropriate.
It's important to note that print is a special case. The only functions that work this way are ones that are explicitly written to work this way. For ordinary functions and methods, like input, or the savefig method of Matplotlib plots, we need to prepare a string ourselves.
Concatenation
Python supports using + between two strings, but not between strings and other types. To work around this, we need to convert other values to string explicitly: 'hanning' + str(num) + '.pdf'.
Template-based approaches
Most ways to solve the problem involve having some kind of "template" string that includes "placeholders" that show where information should be added, and then using some function or method to add the missing information.
f-strings
This is the recommended approach when possible. It looks like f'hanning{num}.pdf'. The names of variables to insert appear directly in the string. It is important to note that there is not actually such a thing as an "f-string"; it's not a separate type. Instead, Python will translate the code ahead of time:
>>> def example(num):
... return f'hanning{num}.pdf'
...
>>> import dis
>>> dis.dis(example)
2 0 LOAD_CONST 1 ('hanning')
2 LOAD_FAST 0 (num)
4 FORMAT_VALUE 0
6 LOAD_CONST 2 ('.pdf')
8 BUILD_STRING 3
10 RETURN_VALUE
Because it's a special syntax, it can access opcodes that aren't used in other approaches.
str.format
This is the recommended approach when f-strings aren't possible - mainly, because the template string needs to be prepared ahead of time and filled in later. It looks like 'hanning{}.pdf'.format(num), or 'hanning{num}.pdf'.format(num=num)'. Here, format is a method built in to strings, which can accept arguments either by position or keyword.
Particularly for str.format, it's useful to know that the built-in locals, globals and vars functions return dictionaries that map variable names to the contents of those variables. Thus, rather than something like '{a}{b}{c}'.format(a=a, b=b, c=c), we can use something like '{a}{b}{c}'.format(**locals()), unpacking the locals() dict.
str.format_map
This is a rare variation on .format. It looks like 'hanning{num}.pdf'.format_map({'num': num}). Rather than accepting keyword arguments, it accepts a single argument which is a mapping.
That probably doesn't sound very useful - after all, rather than 'hanning{num}.pdf'.format_map(my_dict), we could just as easily write 'hanning{num}.pdf'.format(**my_dict). However, this is useful for mappings that determine values on the fly, rather than ordinary dicts. In these cases, unpacking with ** might not work, because the set of keys might not be determined ahead of time; and trying to unpack keys based on the template is unwieldy (imagine: 'hanning{num}.pdf'.format(num=my_mapping[num]), with a separate argument for each placeholder).
string.Formatter
The string standard library module contains a rarely used Formatter class. Using it looks like string.Formatter().format('hanning{num}.pdf', num=num). The template string uses the same syntax again. This is obviously clunkier than just calling .format on the string; the motivation is to allow users to subclass Formatter to define a different syntax for the template string.
All of the above approaches use a common "formatting language" (although string.Formatter allows changing it); there are many other things that can be put inside the {}. Explaining how it works is beyond the scope of this answer; please consult the documentation. Do keep in mind that literal { and } characters need to be escaped by doubling them up. The syntax is presumably inspired by C#.
The % operator
This is a legacy way to solve the problem, inspired by C and C++. It has been discouraged for a long time, but is still supported. It looks like 'hanning%s.pdf' % num, for simple cases. As you'd expect, literal '%' symbols in the template need to be doubled up to escape them.
It has some issues:
It seems like the conversion specifier (the letter after the %) should match the type of whatever is being interpolated, but that's not actually the case. Instead, the value is converted to the specified type, and then to string from there. This isn't normally necessary; converting directly to string works most of the time, and converting to other types first doesn't help most of the rest of the time. So 's' is almost always used (unless you want the repr of the value, using 'r'). Despite that, the conversion specifier is a mandatory part of the syntax.
Tuples are handled specially: passing a tuple on the right-hand side is the way to provide multiple arguments. This is an ugly special case that's necessary because we aren't using function-call syntax. As a result, if you actually want to format a tuple into a single placeholder, it must be wrapped in a 1-tuple.
Other sequence types are not handled specially, and the different behaviour can be a gotcha.
string.Template
The string standard library module contains a rarely used Template class. Instances provide substitute and safe_substitute methods that work similarly to the built-in .format (safe_substitute will leave placeholders intact rather than raising an exception when the arguments don't match). This should also be considered a legacy approach to the problem.
It looks like string.Template('hanning$num.pdf').substitute(num=num), and is inspired by traditional Perl syntax. It's obviously clunkier than the .format approach, since a separate class has to be used before the method is available. Braces ({}) can be used optionally around the name of the variable, to avoid ambiguity. Similarly to the other methods, literal '$' in the template needs to be doubled up for escaping.
I had a need for an extended version of this: instead of embedding a single number in a string, I needed to generate a series of file names of the form 'file1.pdf', 'file2.pdf' etc. This is how it worked:
['file' + str(i) + '.pdf' for i in range(1,4)]
You can make dict and substitute variables in your string.
var = {"name": "Abdul Jalil", "age": 22}
temp_string = "My name is %(name)s. I am %(age)s years old." % var
This question already has answers here:
Why is it string.join(list) instead of list.join(string)?
(11 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
When joining a list in python, join is a function of a str, so you would do
>>>', '.join(['abc', '123', 'zyx'])
'abc, 123, zyx'
I feel like it would be more intuitive to have it as a property of a list (or any iterator really),
>>>['abc', '123', 'zyx'].join(', ')
'abc, 123, zyx'
Why is this?
.join() is a property of str object, not list. Unfortunately like javascript it isn't posssible to add custom methods to built-in objects, but you can create new classes like:
class MyString:
def __init__(self, string):
self.string = string
def join(self,sep):
return sep.join(self.string)
mystring = MyString("this is the string")
print(mystring.join())
To get original string use mystring.string and you can apply normal python properties and methods
Basically, join only works on lists of strings; it does not do any type coercion. joining a list that has one or more non-string elements will raise an exception.
You can find the reason for that in the article: http://www.faqs.org/docs/diveintopython/odbchelper_join.html
The true why can probably only be given to you by developers and thinkers behind Python, but I will try to give it a jab.
Firstly if you had join on lists, when what would this operation mean for lists of arbitrary objects? For example if you had a list of HttpClient objects, what would the result of the join be? The answer is that it is probably not even valid to ask such question in the first place, since we can assign no meaning to joining arbitrary objects.
Secondly even if the operation is part of String objects API it does not make it impossible for it to also be an operation on objects of some arbitrary other class. This means that if you have a use case where you require .join() operation on lists, then you can create a special lists class which implements this behavior. You can achieve this using either inheritance or composition, whichever you prefer.
This question already has answers here:
How do I put a variable’s value inside a string (interpolate it into the string)?
(9 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
in C# it was Possible to Use a Code Like This:
Console.WriteLine ("hello{0}" ,Hello);
i Want to do Same Thing in Python,i Want to Call Variable With {0} and {1} Way.
How Can I Do This ?
You can use format for the same
"hello {0}".format("Hello")
You can use the str.format function:
"Hello {0} {1}".format(firstname, lastname)
You can also leave the space in between the {} blank to automatically pick the next argument:
>>> "{}, {}".format("one", "two")
one, two
You can also use a prettier "f string" syntax since python 3.6:
f"Hello{Hello}"
The variable inside the {} will be looked up and placed inside the code.
You can use place holders to format strings in Python. So in this example, if you want to use a place holder such as {0}, you have to use a method called .format in Python. Below is a mini example.
name = input('Please enter your name: ')
with open('random_sample.txt', 'w') as sample:
sample.write('Hello {0}'.format(name))
As you can see, I ask the user for a name and then store that name in a variable. In my string that I write to a txt file, I use the place holder, and outside of the string I use the .format method. The argument that you enter will be the variable that you want to use.
if you want to add another variable {1} you would do this:
sample.write('Hello {0}. You want a {1}').format(name, other_variable))
so whenever you use a placeholder like this in Python, use the .format() method. You will have to do additional research on it because this is just a mini example.
This question already has answers here:
Slicing strings in str.format
(6 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
How can I do variable string slicing inside string.format like this.
"{0[:2]} Some text {0[2:4]} some text".format("123456")
Result I want result like this.
12 Some text 34 some text
You can't. Best you can do is limit how many characters of a string are printed (roughly equivalent to specifying a slice end), but you can't specify arbitrary start or end indices.
Save the data to a named variable and pass the slices to the format method, it's more readable, more intuitive, and easier for the parser to identify errors when they occur:
mystr = "123456"
"{} Some text {} some text".format(mystr[:2], mystr[2:4])
You could move some of the work from that to the format string if you really wanted to, but it's not a huge improvement (and in fact, involves larger temporaries when a slice ends up being needed anyway):
"{:.2s} Some text {:.2s} some text".format(mystr, mystr[2:])
This question already has answers here:
How do I escape curly-brace ({}) characters in a string while using .format (or an f-string)?
(23 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
again :)
I found this bit of code
col_width=[13,11]
header=['First Name','Last Name']
format_specs = ["{{:{}}}".format(col_width[i]) for i in range(len(col_width))]
lheader=[format_specs[i].format(self.__header[i]) for i in range(nb_columns)]
How Python evaluate this statement? Why we use three { when we have one element to format in every iteration?
when you do {{}}, python skips the replacement of {} and makes it the part of string. Below is the sample example to explain this:
>>> '{{}}'.format(3) # with two '{{}}'
'{}' # nothing added to the string, instead made inner `{}` as the part of string
>>> '{{{}}}'.format(3) # with three '{{{}}}'
'{3}' # replaced third one with the number
Similarly, your expression is evaluating as:
>>> '{{:{}}}'.format(3)
'{:3}' # during creation of "format_specs"
For details, refer: Format String Syntax document.