What is the point of a minor?

Not quite sure what the point of the %s is in Python, help?

• I'm learning Python from a book right now and I can't figure out what the point is of using the %s to site a specific item in a list, string, dictionary, etc. For example: names = ["jones", "cohen", "smith", "griffin"] print(names[1]) print("%s" % names[1]) Both commands print "cohen," what's the point of ever using the %s?

• Answer:

  The idea is to allow you to easily create more complicated output like print("The name is %s!" % names[1]) instead of print("The name is " + names[1] + "!") However, as you're just starting to use Python, you should start learning the http://docs.python.org/library/string.html#new-string-formatting right away: print("The name is {}!".format(names[1]) Of course, this example can't show the real power of string formatting methods. You can do much more with those, for example (taken from the docs linked above): >>> '{0}{1}{0}'.format('abra', 'cad') # arguments' indices can be repeated 'abracadabra' >>> coord = {'latitude': '37.24N', 'longitude': '-115.81W'} >>> 'Coordinates: {latitude}, {longitude}'.format(**coord) 'Coordinates: 37.24N, -115.81W' >>> coord = (3, 5) >>> 'X: {0[0]}; Y: {0[1]}'.format(coord) 'X: 3; Y: 5' >>> # format also supports binary numbers >>> "int: {0:d}; hex: {0:#x}; oct: {0:#o}; bin: {0:#b}".format(42) 'int: 42; hex: 0x2a; oct: 0o52; bin: 0b101010' and so on...