"func-fix" strings

Ideas
1

f-strings, t-strings, d-strings… The idea is to go meta on prefixed strings and get func-fix strings where @<name><string literal> is equivalent to the function call of name(<string-literal>)

so:

...
d = textwrap.dedent
...
print(@d"""\
  This little piggy
  Little Bo Peep\
""")
2

This won’t work because different string literal types require different parsing and compiler rules at the language level.

For f/t-strings, what’s inside curly brackets are expressions that need to be eagerly evaluated in the scope where the f/t-strings are defined.

For d-strings, if the line continuation marker \ is given a significant meaning as it is being discussed, it’ll also require a different parsing rule that makes your proposal not work.

3

Thanks for that explanation.
I am still wary of a proliferation of string types and so am left still trying to find some way of “combining” them. :disappointed_face:

4

This only saves a single character over what you can already write:

d = textwrap.dedent

print(d("""..."""))

What’s the benefit of adding a new special case for function application?

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5

You can do this today, by writing name(<string-literal>).

It’s the most elegant possible syntax for it!

Seriously though: I’m really struggling to understand the current fad for “lots of slightly different string prefixes”.

In the PEP 750 discussion I opposed the idea of allowing (1) some_html = html'<br/>' on the grounds that it’s far more beneficial to write it as (2) some_html = html(t'<br/>'). Your suggestion is approximately the same as saying we should use syntax (1) (the only difference is that it’s for non-t-strings and has an @ added).

String prefixes are for the Python parser. When you just want to turn a string into something else, use a function call or a class constructor.

7 Likes