Best way to format a string in python when non-formatting curly brackets are present in the string

Asked Aug 18 '20 at 20:50

Active Aug 18 '20 at 20:59

Viewed 23 times

I have an issue where I need to format a string using python2.7. The method I wanted use works fine using f strings in 3.6, but those don't work natively in 2.7. The string contains some already existing pattern matching that seems to cause format to not want to work. See a simple example.

>>> h = '{device} "\\b\d{9,12}\\b" {count1} {count2}'
>>> h.format(device='CISCO1', count1=1, count2=2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#4>", line 1, in <module>
    h.format(device='CISCO1', count1=1, count2=2)
KeyError: '9,12'

I have removed the full string as it is proprietary but this captures the problem. I need to be able to format the device, count1, and count2 without needing the {9,12} to be considered. I tried using the % operator but that too caused problems. Is there an easy way to do this?

edited Aug 18 '20 at 20:59

asked Aug 18 '20 at 20:50

Chris Jones

Can you use re.sub? – Stuart Buckingham Aug 18 '20 at 20:55
I suppose that might work. I was hoping to find a better way to just format it, but this should work pretty easily. – Chris Jones Aug 18 '20 at 20:56
Actually... apparently {{ }} works around the regular expression. – Chris Jones Aug 18 '20 at 21:00
This works: ```>>> h = '{device} "\\b\d{{9,12}}\\b" {count1} {count2}' >>> h.format(device="a", count1="b", count2="c") 'a "\\b\\d{9,12}\\b" b c'``` – erewok Aug 18 '20 at 21:00
Yeah, you figured it out: you have to add another set of braces to get those to be ignored. – erewok Aug 18 '20 at 21:01
yeah, I searched something like this, But the question that was linked to mine was not one that I found when searching. Easy though. – Chris Jones Aug 18 '20 at 21:02

Best way to format a string in python when non-formatting curly brackets are present in the string

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