Programming Tutorials

Variables And Printing in Python

By: Zed A. Shaw Printer Friendly Format    

Now we’ll do even more typing of variables and printing them out. This time we’ll use something called a “format string”. Every time you put " (double-quotes) around a piece of text you have been making a string. A string is how you make something that your program might give to a human. You print them, save them to files, send them to web servers, all sorts of things.

Strings are really handy, so in this exercise you will learn how to make strings that have variables embedded in them. You embed variables inside a string by using specialized format sequences and then putting the variables at the end with a special syntax that tells Python, “Hey, this is a format string, put these variables in there.” As usual, just type this in even if you do not understand it and make it exactly the same.

1 my_name = 'Zed A. Shaw'
2 my_age = 35 # not a lie
3 my_height = 74 # inches
4 my_weight = 180 # lbs
5 my_eyes = 'Blue'
6 my_teeth = 'White'
7 my_hair = 'Brown'
8
9 print "Let's talk about %s." % my_name
10 print "He's %d inches tall." % my_height
11 print "He's %d pounds heavy." % my_weight
12 print "Actually that's not too heavy."
13 print "He's got %s eyes and %s hair." % (my_eyes, my_hair)
14 print "His teeth are usually %s depending on the coffee." % my_teeth
15
16 # this line is tricky, try to get it exactly right
17 print "If I add %d, %d, and %d I get %d." % (
18 my_age, my_height, my_weight, my_age + my_height + my_weight)

What You Should See

$ python ex5.py
Let's talk about Zed A. Shaw.
He's 74 inches tall.
He's 180 pounds heavy.
Actually that's not too heavy.
He's got Blue eyes and Brown hair.
His teeth are usually White depending on the coffee.
If I add 35, 74, and 180 I get 289.
$