I don't think something like "foo bar %s".format(foobar) would work either in this situation. I think you're conflating format strings with the lazy evaluation

I don't think something like "foo bar %s".format(foobar) would work either in this situation. I think you're conflating format strings with the lazy evaluation associated with logging. I am, however, in complete agreement that logging should adopt at least the same formatting used by .format