Python TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

Question

Here's the output. These are utf-8 strings I believe... some of these can be NoneType but it fails immediately, before ones like that...

instr = "'%s', '%s', '%d', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s'" % softname, procversion, int(percent), exe, description, company, procurl

TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

Its 7 for 7 though?

Andrew Clark · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-21 20:27:31Z

291

You need to put the format arguments into a tuple (add parentheses):

instr = "'%s', '%s', '%d', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s'" % (softname, procversion, int(percent), exe, description, company, procurl)

What you currently have is equivalent to the following:

intstr = ("'%s', '%s', '%d', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s'" % softname), procversion, int(percent), exe, description, company, procurl

Example:

>>> "%s %s" % 'hello', 'world'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: not enough arguments for format string
>>> "%s %s" % ('hello', 'world')
'hello world'

answered Jun 21, 2012 at 20:27

Andrew Clark

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2 Comments

y2k Over a year ago

That worked..sort of. I was trying to use %s formatting to avoid the NoneType error, but I'm getting it still. Related: stackoverflow.com/questions/1338690/…

Blair Over a year ago

Won't be useful to the OP, given the age, but just in case still useful to someone: a simple workaround where a variable may be none is to guard against that with a ternary statement - i.e. "%s %s" % (a if a is not None else "", b) if we are worried about a possibly being None. So even if a is None we still aren't passing None to the format operator and causing problems.

Simeon Visser · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-22 07:49:05Z

191

Note that the % syntax for formatting strings is becoming outdated. If your version of Python supports it, you should write:

instr = "'{0}', '{1}', '{2}', '{3}', '{4}', '{5}', '{6}'".format(softname, procversion, int(percent), exe, description, company, procurl)

This also fixes the error that you happened to have.

edited Jun 22, 2012 at 7:49

answered Jun 21, 2012 at 20:36

Simeon Visser

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8 Comments

AllTradesJack Over a year ago

Does this work for the logging module as well? Is this kind of interpolation understood by it?

Simeon Visser Over a year ago

@joshsvoss: yes, there are a few links mentioned here that discuss the possibilities: bugs.python.org/issue14031

Djuka Over a year ago

@SimeonVisser, why is this becoming outdated? If you, for example, use one variable to store format string and you want to put string with replaced values in same variable you get just a tad bit cleaner code with format_string %= ('bla', 'bla', 'bla'). Care to elaborate or point to some useful link about this?

Simeon Visser Over a year ago

Also, format() supports more explicit ways of expressing what happens, such as "{a} {b}".format(a='3', b='4').

Hzz Over a year ago

I'm using python 3.6.5 and the percent sign operator still can be used...

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Harsha Biyani · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-20 13:42:28Z

29

I got the same error when using % as a percent character in my format string. The solution to this is to double up the %%.

edited May 20, 2019 at 13:42

Harsha Biyani

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answered Jul 6, 2017 at 18:33

Bruce Jakeway

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3 Comments

Ramon Over a year ago

Providing some code examples of how your solution works, and how it fails without it, etc. might be useful. See How do I write a good answer?. Note that this is a 5 year old question, so you should add an answer only if it provides significantly more information than those already there.

Akavall Over a year ago

I got a variation of this error due to typo: "foo: %(foo)s, bar: s(bar)% baz: %(baz)s" % {"foo": "FOO", "bar": "BAR", "baz": "BAZ"}

JonyD Over a year ago

For python3 this "solution" is wrong -> Invalid syntax

Hardik Raval · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-04 14:49:57Z

0

I had the same issue I was using a raw query for a specific reason and this was to add double quotes in TIME_FORMAT function.

User.objects.raw(
            f'SELECT f1,f2,TIME_FORMAT(SEC_TO_TIME(SUM(TIME_TO_SEC(end_time) - TIME_TO_SEC(start_time))),"%%H:%%i") AS log FROM users GROUP BY start_dt')

answered Mar 4, 2021 at 14:49

Hardik Raval

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Comments

luoxiaoyu · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-06 06:50:48Z

0

def process_item(self, item, spider):
    sql = "insert into fd(province,pici,subject,maxscore,midscore,minscore,zy,school) values('%s', '%s','%s'," \
          "'%s','%s','%s','%s','%s','%s')"
    data = (item['province'],item['pici'],item['subject'],item['maxscore'],item['midscore'],item['minscore'],item['zy'],item['school'])

    self.cursor.execute(sql % data)

answered Apr 6, 2023 at 6:50

luoxiaoyu

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