is there a multiple format specifier in Python?

Question

I have a data table 44 columns wide that I need to write to file. I don't want to write:

outfile.write("%i,%f,%f,$f ... )\n" % (i, a,b,c ...))

In Fortran you can specify multiple format specifiers easily:

write (*,"(3f8.3)") a,b,c

Is there a similar capability in Python?

Answer 1

Are you asking about

format= "%i" + ",%f"*len(row) + "\n"
outfile.write( format % ([i]+row))

Answer 2

>>> "%d " * 3
'%d %d %d '
>>> "%d " * 3 % (1,2,3)
'1 2 3 '

Answer 3

Is not exactly the same, but you can try something like this:

values=[1,2.1,3,4,5]  #you can use variables instead of values of course
outfile.write(",".join(["%f" % value for value in values]));

Answer 4

Note that I think it'd be much better to do something like:

outfile.write(", ".join(map(str, row)))

...which isn't what you asked for, but is better in a couple of ways.