Problem with formatting and displaying outputs with tkinter and loops

Question

I am trying to have my program format properly in a tkinter GUI but for some reason I get the error message:

    product += ('%-10s%-10s%-0s%-0s') % (str(names[i])+ str(addedHours[i]) + str(payOut) + "\n") TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

Desired Output:

Here is the snip of code related to the problem (Note that the Name/Hours/Pay and --- parts are working fine, just not the ones under the variable product)

    def printPayroll(self):

        i = 0
        product = ""
        for y in names:

            payOut = float(wage[i]) * float(addedHours[i])
            product += ('%-10s%-10s%-0s%-0s') % (str(names[i])+ str(addedHours[i]) + str(payOut) + "\n")

            i += 1

        self.text.insert(END,("%-10s%-10s%-0s") % ('Name', 'Hours', 'Pay\n'))
        self.text.insert(END,("%-10s%-10s%-0s") % ('---','-----','---\n'))

        self.text.insert(END, product)

Bryan Oakley · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-16 19:28:48Z

1

The error message you get, TypeError: not enough arguments for format string, is telling you exactly what the problem is.

Consider this line of code:

product += ('%-10s%-10s%-0s%-0s') % (str(names[i])+ str(addedHours[i]) + str(payOut) + "\n")

The above code is functionally identical to this:

s = str(names[i]) + str(addedHours[i]) + str(payOut) + "\n"
product += ('%-10s%-10s%-0s%-0s') % s

Your formatting string requires four arguments but you are only giving one. The simple solution is to replace every + with a ,:

product += ('%-10s%-10s%-0s%-0s') % (str(names[i]), str(addedHours[i]),  str(payOut), "\n")

answered Apr 16, 2019 at 19:28

Bryan Oakley

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5 Comments

InstantNut Over a year ago

what a god <3 <3 <3

Bryan Oakley Over a year ago

@jimmyjohn123: no, not really. You just need to read the error message and assume it's telling you the truth. Then, ask yourself "why does it think I'm only providing one argument?".

InstantNut Over a year ago

also, if I were to insert a dollar sign in the str(payOut) what would I need to do?

InstantNut Over a year ago

yeah that is true, I assumed using '+' separates then into different arguments like how ',' does it.

Bryan Oakley Over a year ago

@jimmyjohn123: if you want a dollar sign in the output, you would put it in the format string.

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