Dive Into Python

Why did you learn about locals and globals? So you can learn about dictionary-based string formatting. As you recall, regular string formatting provides an easy way to insert values into strings. Values are listed in a tuple and inserted in order into the string in place of each formatting marker. While this is efficient, it is not always the easiest code to read, especially when multiple values are being inserted. You can't simply scan through the string in one pass and understand what the result will be; you're constantly switching between reading the string and reading the tuple of values.

Example 8.13. Introducing dictionary-based string formatting

>>> params = {"server":"mpilgrim", "database":"master", "uid":"sa", "pwd":"secret"}
>>> "%(pwd)s" % params                                    
'secret'
>>> "%(pwd)s is not a good password for %(uid)s" % params 
'secret is not a good password for sa'
>>> "%(database)s of mind, %(database)s of body" % params 
'master of mind, master of body'

	Instead of a tuple of explicit values, this form of string formatting uses a dictionary, params. And instead of a simple %s marker in the string, the marker contains a name in parentheses. This name is used as a key in the params dictionary and subsitutes the corresponding value, secret, in place of the %(pwd)s marker.
	Dictionary-based string formatting works with any number of named keys. Each key must exist in the given dictionary, or the formatting will fail with a KeyError.
	You can even specify the same key twice; each occurrence will be replaced with the same value.

So why would you use dictionary-based string formatting? Well, it does seem like overkill to set up a dictionary of keys and values simply to do string formatting in the next line; it's really most useful when you happen to have a dictionary of meaningful keys and values already. Like locals.

Example 8.14. Dictionary-based string formatting in BaseHTMLProcessor.py

    def handle_comment(self, text):        
        self.pieces.append("<!--%(text)s-->" % locals()) 

Using the built-in locals function is the most common use of dictionary-based string formatting. It means that you can use the names of local variables within your string (in this case, text, which was passed to the class method as an argument) and each named variable will be replaced by its value. If text is 'Begin page footer', the string formatting "<!--%(text)s-->" % locals() will resolve to the string '<!--Begin page footer-->'.

Example 8.15. More dictionary-based string formatting

    def unknown_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        strattrs = "".join([' %s="%s"' % (key, value) for key, value in attrs]) 
        self.pieces.append("<%(tag)s%(strattrs)s>" % locals())                      

When this method is called, attrs is a list of key/value tuples, just like the items of a dictionary, which means you can use multi-variable assignment to iterate through it. This should be a familiar pattern by now, but there's a lot going on here, so let's break it down: Suppose attrs is [('href', 'index.php'), ('title', 'Go to home page')]. In the first round of the list comprehension, key will get 'href', and value will get 'index.php'. The string formatting ' %s="%s"' % (key, value) will resolve to ' href="index.php"'. This string becomes the first element of the list comprehension's return value. In the second round, key will get 'title', and value will get 'Go to home page'. The string formatting will resolve to ' title="Go to home page"'. The list comprehension returns a list of these two resolved strings, and strattrs will join both elements of this list together to form ' href="index.php" title="Go to home page"'.

Now, using dictionary-based string formatting, you insert the value of tag and strattrs into a string. So if tag is 'a', the final result would be '<a href="index.php" title="Go to home page">', and that is what gets appended to self.pieces.

	Using dictionary-based string formatting with locals is a convenient way of making complex string formatting expressions more readable, but it comes with a price. There is a slight performance hit in making the call to locals, since locals builds a copy of the local namespace.