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up vote 0 down vote favorite

In python say you have

s = "string"
i = 0
print s+i

will give you error so you write

print s+str(i)

to not get error.

I think this is quite a clumsy way to handle int and string concatenation. Even Java does not need explicit casting to String to do this sort of concatenation. Is there a better way to do this sort of concatenation i.e without explicit casting in Python?

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2  
It's because Python is Strong typed (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_typing) language (something to google on to understand more :)). – mouad Jul 19 '12 at 10:44
It would lead to ambiguity. What would be the result of "1" + 1, 2 or "11" and why? – Buddy Jul 19 '12 at 11:02
Buddy I am not sure what you are thinking but please dont just assume. My problem was to concatenate 2 different object types and I found the solution. I dont know how much have you programmed in python but have you ever tried to concatenate two strings only to get error when one of them is None type? You can do explicit checks ya but that is just extra bit of code. This sort of thing is required when you need to log errors. – specialscope Sep 19 '12 at 4:48

4 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Modern string formatting:

"{} and {}".format("string", 1)
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Thanks this nice way to do it. – specialscope Jul 19 '12 at 10:48
up vote 4 down vote

No string formatting:

>> print 'Foo',0
Foo 0
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1  
This will work well with print but cannot be assigned to a variable as a string. It gives Set object. – specialscope Jul 19 '12 at 10:49
It also sticks in an extra blank between the two items, unless you use the v3 print() function and set some of its parameters. – Levon Jul 19 '12 at 10:59
up vote 2 down vote

String formatting, using the new-style .format() method (with the defaults .format() provides):

 '{}{}'.format(s, i)

Or the older, but "still sticking around", %-formatting:

 '%s%d' %(s, i)

In both examples above there's no space between the two items concatenated. If space is needed, it can simply be added in the format strings.

These provide a lot of control and flexibility about how to concatenate items, the space between them etc. For details about format specifications see this.

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up vote 0 down vote

Python is an interesting language in that while there is usually one (or two) "obvious" ways to accomplish any given task, flexibility still exists.

s = "string"
i = 0

print (s + repr(i))

The above code snippet is written in Python3 syntax but the parentheses after print were always allowed (optional) until version 3 made them mandatory.

Hope this helps.

Caitlin

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