Why isn't the ‘format’ method more widely used in Python?
<p>I'm probably missing something here, after searching I couldn't find an answer.</p>

<p>I've explored quite a few Python projects and one thing I keep noticing is the fact that the majority of them continue to use the <strong><code>%</code></strong> operator for formatting strings rather than the newer, recommended <strong><code>.format()</code></strong> method. Is there a reason for this? it seems like a trivial change, unless I'm missing something entirely.</p>

<p>For example:</p>

<pre><code># count how many times the % operator technique is used
find . -name "*.py" -exec grep -HE "\"[^\"]+\"\s\%\s\w+|'[^']+'\s\%\s\w+" {} \; | wc -l

# and the same for format()
find . -name "*.py" -exec grep -HE "\w+\.format\(" {} \; | wc -l

# Results:
#
#               % operator        format()
# iPython          670               63
# Django           977               8
# Tornado          91                0
# requests         25                1
</code></pre>

<p>No real reason for this question, just curious.</p>

<p>Cheers guys!</p>
