Pretty printing in bash script using Python

Question

Why does this line give error in bash script?

$ python -c "print "{:02d}".format(3)"

  File "<string>", line 1
    print {:02d}.format(3)
       ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I am typing this directly in terminal.

While in python console :

>>> print "{:02d}".format(1)
01

You can't "nest" double quotes like that. The inner two quotes aren't getting passed to python they are getting paired with the first and last quote by the shell and being removed so python sees print {:02d}.format(3) as the code to run. — Etan Reisner
– Etan Reisner, Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 4:22
Oops. Ah! yes. They are getting paired. Stupid me! thanks for pointing @EtanReisner. :) — Abhishek Tripathi
– Abhishek Tripathi, Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 4:24
@AbhishekTripathi feel free to click the tick near any answer below that comes close to answering the question. A proven history of accepting answers on StackOverflow will encourage more people to answer your subsequent questions. — ChrisGuest
– ChrisGuest, Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 4:31
@ChrisGuest : I had upvoted other questions when I asked this one. So, when I went clicking on the tick mark, it said 'wait for 8 min'. And then I went busy with something else. Thanks for reminding. ^_^ — Abhishek Tripathi
– Abhishek Tripathi, Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 0:59

ChrisGuest · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-19 04:20:54Z

3

You are using double quotes in bash and attempting to use double quotes in Python too. However it appears that bash is interpreting that as two sets of double quotes without any nesting and they are stripped out and they do not reach the python interpreter. So python sees this and raises a SyntaxError:

print {:02d}.format(3)

Try using single quotes in bash, and double in python. That will be simpler than having to escape the double quotes.

python -c 'print "{:02d}".format(3)'

answered Nov 19, 2015 at 4:20

ChrisGuest

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