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Formatting Strings

Quick Reference

Any data we’re going to work with must be formatted in order to be displayed to the user. This can be done using the format() method for strings:

pref_string = "My favorite language is {}"
print(pref_string.format(name))
Curly braces are used to format the data to be displayed. Since the micro-language is quite complex, I encourage you to consult
the documentation for a comprehensive overview of its features.

Here are the most common ones:

  • {1} displays the second item in the data list.
  • {:.2f} displays the data as a floating-point number with two decimal places
  • {:10} reserves 10 spaces to display the data
  • {:10.2f} reserves 10 spaces to display a floating-point number with two decimal places
  • {1:10.2f} reserves 10 spaces to display the second element of the data list as a floating-point number with two decimal places

Python also supports f-strings, which have the following syntax:

print(f"My favorite language is {name}")

The formatting features of the .format() method also apply to f-strings.

First Exercise

A quick speed calculation. I traveled 19.7 meters in 6.892 seconds. Display the speed with its unit, rounding to two decimal places.

Second Exercise

You will need the pyflix package

I want to determine what time I’ll go to bed after watching a few episodes of my series.

I’ll watch 7 consecutive 23-minute episodes.

The start of my evening is obtained using the pyflix.datasource.get_start_time() function.

Display the bedtime in the format "I’ll go to bed at 22:04".