On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 6:23 AM, rantingrick <[email protected]> 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.
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