Question

def seuss(myName):
  print('I am %s.' % myName, end=' ')
    print(myName, 'I am.')
  print('Do you like green eggs and ham?')
    print()

The end argument was discussed in the book in Section 2.8. Also, the last line of the function (the print with empty parentheses) prints out a blank line. propose a reason the first call to print uses the output formatting operator %, while the second one doesn't ?

Answer 1

The % operator can be used for string formatting. It interprets the left argument much like a printf()-style format string to be applied to the right argument. In Python, there is no printf() function but the functionality of the ancient printf is contained in Python. To this purpose, the modulo operator % is overloaded by the string class to perform string formatting. Therefore, it is often called string modulo (or sometimes even called modulus) operator.

In the first print() call, we want to print "I am <myName>". In this case, we can use the % operation to replace it with myName.

Whereas, in the second print() call, we would want to print "<myName> I am.".

In this case, since we are printing the name in the beginning, it is recommended not to use % operator.