How to override default string formatter?

Python doesn't support extending the mechanics of how f-strings are parsed; the reference doesn't give the specific mechanism, but it doesn't say that there's any connection between the parsing of f-strings and other formatting tools like string.Formatter, other than a superficial use of the same formatting mini-language.

What f-strings are specified to do is to concatenate all of the literal string bits with appropriately formatted expressions. If you want to change how an individual expression is formatted, you can do that by overriding __format__ on your values or wrapping a value with a class having a custom __format__:

>>> class Wrapper:
...   def __init__(self, value):
...     self.value = value
...   def __format__(self, format_spec):
...     if format_spec == 'customformat':
...       return '!!!'
...     return format(self.value, format_spec)
... 
>>> f"-- {Wrapper(42)} --"
'-- 42 --'
>>> f"-- {Wrapper(42):customformat} --"
'-- !!! --'

But you can't fundamentally change the way that f-strings get parsed, the way that you can with a string.Formatter subclass; nor can you change the run-time behavior of an f-string to automatically wrap all of the incoming expressions, for example. (It may be possible to do this in a particular Python implementation, but CPython's code doesn't seem to allow it, and it certainly wouldn't be guaranteed to work across any other implementation. CPython parses the internals of f-strings at the same time as it parses the rest of your code, so there is no opportunity to override that behavior.)

posted almost 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

4y ago

r~~‭

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