Best practice for string substition with gettext using Python
- by Malcolm
Looking for best practice advice on what string substitution technique to use when using gettext(). Or do all techniques apply equally?
I can think of at least 3 string techniques:
Classic "%" based formatting:
"My name is %(name)s" % locals()
.format() based formatting:
"My name is {name}".format( locals() )
string.Template.safe_substitute()
import string
template = string.Template( "My name is ${name}" )
template.safe_substitute( locals() )
The advantage of the string.Template technique is that a translated string with with an incorrectly spelled variable reference can still yield a usable string value while the other techniques unconditionally raise an exception. The downside of the string.Template technique appears to be the inability for one to customize how a variable is formatted (padding, justification, width, etc).
