> I don't quite understand your example. `b'%s/%s' % (b'abc', b'def')` works in both 2 and 3. So does `u'%s/%s' % (b'abc'.decode('utf8'), b'def'.decode('utf8'))

> I don't quite understand your example. `b'%s/%s' % (b'abc', b'def')` works in both 2 and 3. So does `u'%s/%s' % (b'abc'.decode('utf8'), b'def'.decode('utf8'))`, if you wanted to get a unicode string out of it. We're discussing the linked article, so I'm talking in the context of the linked article. I know it works now, but Python 3 initially removed %-formatting for bytes. I guess I should have used past in my comment, "you were" screwed instead of "you are". From the article: > Another feature was % formatting of strings. Python 2 allowed use of the % formatting operator on both its string types. But Python 3 initially removed the implementation of % from bytes. Why, I have no clue. It is perfectly reasonable to splice byte sequences into a buffer via use of a formatting string. But the Python language maintainers insisted otherwise. And it wasn't until the community complained about its absence loudly enough that this feature was restored in Python 3.5, which was released in September 2015.