Well, I did not want to defend the way .format() works now. That's why I asked for the reasoning. Your reasonable argument sounds reasonable to me, I would cert

Well, I did not want to defend the way .format() works now. That's why I asked for the reasoning. Your reasonable argument sounds reasonable to me, I would certainly use it. But then my initial question is even more important: Why is this not the one Python way. What did the initial designers think?