On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 6:23 AM, rantingrick <rantingr...@gmail.com> wrote: > A specific method for padding a string with ONLY zeros is ludicrous > and exposes the narrow mindedness of the creator. The only thing worse > than "zfill" as a string method is making zfill into built-in > function! The ONLY proper place for zfill is as an option in the > str.format() method. > > py> "{0:zf10}".format(1234) -> "00000000001234"
Agree that zfill seems to be redundant with str.format, although your suggested syntax is atrocious, especially since a syntax already exists that fits better in the already-complicated format specifier syntax. "{0:=010d}".format(1234) -> "0000001234" There are a couple of warts with the existing implementation, however: 1) str.zfill() operates on strings; the .format() syntax operates on numeric types. I would suggest that the "=" fill alignment in format specifiers should be extended to do the same thing as zfill when given a string. 2) It seems to not behave as documented for floats. I expect: "{0:=010f}".format(-32.7) -> "-0000032.7" I get: "{0:=010f}".format(-32.7) -> "-32.700000" On the other hand, I can't imagine why I would ever actually want the expected result, so maybe it's not a big deal. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list