python's ".format" function
dictionary, formatting, python, string
Solution
The first `print` should be
print a.format(**data)
Also, if you are finding some shortcuts, you could write one like, no big difference.
def trans(year, month, location):
return dict(year=year, month=month, location=location)
Problem
Recently, I found `''.format` function very useful because it can improve readability a lot comparing to the `%` formatting. Trying to achieve simple string formatting: ``` data = {'year':2012, 'month':'april', 'location': 'q2dm1'} year = 2012 month = 'april' location = 'q2dm1' a = "year: {year}, month: {month}, location: {location}" print a.format(data) print a.format(year=year, month=month, location=location) print a.format(year, month, location) ``` Whilst two first prints do format as I expect (yes, `something=something` looks ugly, but that's an example only), the last one would raise `KeyError: 'year'`. Is there any trick in python to create dictionary so it will automatically fill keys and values, for example `somefunc(year, month, location)` will output `{'year':year, 'month': month, 'location': location}`? I'm pretty new to python and couldn't find any info on this topic, however a trick like this would improve and shrink my current code drastically. Thanks in advance and pardon my English.