I have the following f-string:
f"Something{function(parameter)}"
I want to hardcode that parameter, which is a string:
f"Something{function("foobar")}"
It gives me this error:
SyntaxError: f-string: unmatched '('
How do I do this?
3 Answers
Because f-strings are recognized by the lexer, not the parser, you cannot nest quotes of the same type in a string. The lexer is just looking for the next ", regardless of its context. Use single quotes inside f"..." or double quotes inside f'...'.
f"Something{function('foobar')}"
f'Something{function("foobar")}'
Escaping quotes is not an option (for reasons that escape me at the moment), which means arbitrarily nested expressions are not an option. You only have 4 types of quotes to work with:
"..."'...'"""..."""'''...'''
1 Comment
Marco Bonelli
"Escaping quotes is not an option" - I bet language designers did not want to deal with the awkward escaping madness which could happen inside f-string expressions, and decided to keep it simple.
You can use the fact that python has two types of quotes:
f"Something{function('foobar')}"
or
f'Something{function("foobar")}'
What you unfortunately can't do, is escape the inner string's quotes. f"Something{str.upper(\"foobar\")}" will result in
SyntaxError: f-string expression part cannot include a backslash
This is specifically addressed in PEP-498, which defines how f-strings work.
Comments
Python allows both "" and '' around strings. Easiest is to use:
f"Something{function('foobar')}"
f"Something{function('foobar')}"