Python – How to Escape Curly-Brace Characters in a String

curly-bracesformatpythonstringstring-formatting

Non-working example:

print(" \{ Hello \} {0} ".format(42))

Desired output:

 {Hello} 42

Best Answer

You need to double the {{ and }}:

>>> x = " {{ Hello }} {0} "
>>> print(x.format(42))
' { Hello } 42 '

Here's the relevant part of the Python documentation for format string syntax:

Format strings contain “replacement fields” surrounded by curly braces {}. Anything that is not contained in braces is considered literal text, which is copied unchanged to the output. If you need to include a brace character in the literal text, it can be escaped by doubling: {{ and }}.

Related Solutions

Python – How to Format String with Extra Curly Braces

Method 1, which is what I'd actually do: use a string.Template instead.

>>> from string import Template
>>> Template(r'\textbf{This and that} plus \textbf{$val}').substitute(val='6')
'\\textbf{This and that} plus \\textbf{6}'

Method 2: add extra braces. Could do this using a regexp.

>>> r'\textbf{This and that} plus \textbf{val}'.format(val='6')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in <module>
KeyError: 'This and that'
>>> r'\textbf{{This and that}} plus \textbf{{{val}}}'.format(val='6')
'\\textbf{This and that} plus \\textbf{6}'

(possible) Method 3: use a custom string.Formatter. I haven't had cause to do this myself so I don't know enough of the details to be helpful.

Best Answer

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Python – How to Format String with Extra Curly Braces

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