Having problems with strings in HTML

[Kiana Toufighi]

Hi,

I get a very odd error:
ValueError: unsupported format character 't' (0x74) at index 237

Here's my code:
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME = '/var/tmp/out.txt'

print '''
<a
href="http://bbc.botany.utoronto.ca/ntools/cgi-bin/ntools_treeview_word.cgi?input=&max=2&values_off=n o&remove_bracket=no&show_line_nr=yes&show_link_out =yes&decimal_places=10&show_classification=yes&db= arabidopsis&selection=any%20term&mode=&mode_nos=&y ellow_blue=yes&local_file_name=%(OUT_FILE_NAME)s&s how_instructions=no&expt_link=NASCArrays&max_adjus t=2&view_size=large&highlight=%(HI_LITE_FILE_NAME) s">GraphicalOutput</a>
''' % {'OUT_FILE_NAME': OUT_FILE_NAME, 'HI_LITE_FILE_NAME':
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME}

I wonder if this has something to do with HTML's % character.

KT

[James Stroud]

Kiana Toufighi wrote:

Hi,

I get a very odd error:
ValueError: unsupported format character 't' (0x74) at index 237

Here's my code:
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME = '/var/tmp/out.txt'

print '''
<a
href="http://bbc.botany.utoronto.ca/ntools/cgi-bin/ntools_treeview_word.cgi?input=&max=2&values_off=n o&remove_bracket=no&show_line_nr=yes&show_link_out =yes&decimal_places=10&show_classification=yes&db= arabidopsis&selection=any%20term&mode=&mode_nos=&y ellow_blue=yes&local_file_name=%(OUT_FILE_NAME)s&s how_instructions=no&expt_link=NASCArrays&max_adjus t=2&view_size=large&highlight=%(HI_LITE_FILE_NAME) s">GraphicalOutput</a>

''' % {'OUT_FILE_NAME': OUT_FILE_NAME, 'HI_LITE_FILE_NAME':
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME}

I wonder if this has something to do with HTML's % character.

KT

Yes it does. Have a look at urllib.quote and unquote. These may help.

James

--
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/

[John Machin]

On 27/06/2006 7:51 AM, Kiana Toufighi wrote:

Hi,

I get a very odd error:
ValueError: unsupported format character 't' (0x74) at index 237

Here's my code:
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME = '/var/tmp/out.txt'

print '''
<a
href="http://bbc.botany.utoronto.ca/ntools/cgi-bin/ntools_treeview_word.cgi?input=&max=2&values_off=n o&remove_bracket=no&show_line_nr=yes&show_link_out =yes&decimal_places=10&show_classification=yes&db= arabidopsis&selection=any%20term&mode=&mode_nos=&y ellow_blue=yes&local_file_name=%(OUT_FILE_NAME)s&s how_instructions=no&expt_link=NASCArrays&max_adjus t=2&view_size=large&highlight=%(HI_LITE_FILE_NAME) s">GraphicalOutput</a>

''' % {'OUT_FILE_NAME': OUT_FILE_NAME, 'HI_LITE_FILE_NAME':
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME}
That code produces:
NameError: name 'OUT_FILE_NAME' is not defined
When that is remedied, *then* one gets the ValueError.
*Please*, when asking a question, post exactly the code that you ran,
and include the full traceback, not just the last line.

I wonder if this has something to do with HTML's % character.

I'm not sure why you are wondering. The error message told you exactly
what the problem was and exactly where it was (offset 237) in your
format string. . Your format string (the first operand of the string %
operator) contains ...&selection=any%20term... and the %20t looks like a
formatting operation, but (like it said) 't' is not valid.

To overcome this you would need to escape any '%' that is actually part
of the URL by doubling it ...&selection=any%%20term...

This is nothing to do with HTML ... *any* stray '%' will give you grief:

|>> '1% of %s are difficult to understand' % 'error messages'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: int argument required
Have you read this:
http://docs.python.org/lib/typesseq-strings.html
?
It may help.

Cheers,
John

[John Machin]

On 27/06/2006 7:51 AM, Kiana Toufighi wrote:

Hi,

I get a very odd error:
ValueError: unsupported format character 't' (0x74) at index 237

Here's my code:
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME = '/var/tmp/out.txt'

print '''
<a
href="http://bbc.botany.utoronto.ca/ntools/cgi-bin/ntools_treeview_word.cgi?input=&max=2&values_off=n o&remove_bracket=no&show_line_nr=yes&show_link_out =yes&decimal_places=10&show_classification=yes&db= arabidopsis&selection=any%20term&mode=&mode_nos=&y ellow_blue=yes&local_file_name=%(OUT_FILE_NAME)s&s how_instructions=no&expt_link=NASCArrays&max_adjus t=2&view_size=large&highlight=%(HI_LITE_FILE_NAME) s">GraphicalOutput</a>

''' % {'OUT_FILE_NAME': OUT_FILE_NAME, 'HI_LITE_FILE_NAME':
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME}
That code produces:
NameError: name 'OUT_FILE_NAME' is not defined
When that is remedied, *then* one gets the ValueError.
*Please*, when asking a question, post exactly the code that you ran,
and include the full traceback, not just the last line.

I wonder if this has something to do with HTML's % character.

I'm not sure why you are wondering. The error message told you exactly
what the problem was and exactly where it was (offset 237) in your
format string. . Your format string (the first operand of the string %
operator) contains ...&selection=any%20term... and the %20t looks like a
formatting operation, but (like it said) 't' is not valid.

To overcome this you would need to escape any '%' that is actually part
of the URL by doubling it ...&selection=any%%20term...

This is nothing to do with HTML ... *any* stray '%' will give you grief:

|>> '1% of %s are difficult to understand' % 'error messages'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: int argument required
Have you read this:
http://docs.python.org/lib/typesseq-strings.html
?
It may help.

Cheers,
John

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In article <ma***************************************@python. org>,
Kiana Toufighi <ki************@utoronto.ca> wrote:

print '''
<a
href="http://bbc.botany.utoronto.ca/ntools/cgi-bin/ntools_treeview_word.cgi?inp
ut=&max=2&values_off=no&remove_bracket=no&show_li ne_nr=yes&show_link_out=yes&de
cimal_places=10&show_classification=yes&db=arabid opsis&selection=any%20term&mod
e=&mode_nos=&yellow_blue=yes&local_file_name=%(OU T_FILE_NAME)s&show_instruction
s=no&expt_link=NASCArrays&max_adjust=2&view_size= large&highlight=%(HI_LITE_FILE
_NAME)s">GraphicalOutput</a>
''' % {'OUT_FILE_NAME': OUT_FILE_NAME, 'HI_LITE_FILE_NAME':
HI_LITE_FILE_NAME}

By the way, you _do_ realize that your "&" characters should be escaped
as "&amp;", don't you?

[Sion Arrowsmith]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ld*@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:

Kiana Toufighi <ki************@utoronto.ca> wrote:

print '''
<a
href="http://bbc.botany.utoronto.ca/ntools/cgi-bin/ntools_treeview_word.cgi?inp
ut=&max=2&values_off=no&remove_bracket=no&show_l ine_nr=yes&show_link_out=yes
[ ... ] ">GraphicalOutput</a>
''' [ ... ]

By the way, you _do_ realize that your "&" characters should be escaped
as "&amp;", don't you?

No they shouldn't. They part of the url, which is (IIRC) a CDATA
attribute of the A element, not PCDATA.

--
\S -- si***@chiark.greenend.org.uk -- http://www.chaos.org.uk/~sion/
___ | "Frankly I have no feelings towards penguins one way or the other"
\X/ | -- Arthur C. Clarke
her nu becomeþ se bera eadward ofdun hlæddre heafdes bæce bump bump bump

[Fredrik Lundh]

Sion Arrowsmith wrote:

By the way, you _do_ realize that your "&" characters should be escaped
as "&amp;", don't you?

No they shouldn't. They part of the url, which is (IIRC) a CDATA
attribute of the A element, not PCDATA.

Yes they should. CDATA sections can contain character entities; it's elements
that are ignored, not character/entity references.

</F>

[Richard Brodie]

"Sion Arrowsmith" <si***@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:gL*******@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...

By the way, you _do_ realize that your "&" characters should be escaped
as "&amp;", don't you?

No they shouldn't. They part of the url, which is (IIRC) a CDATA
attribute of the A element, not PCDATA.

It is CDATA but ampersands still need to be escaped.

[Walter Dörwald]

Richard Brodie wrote:

"Sion Arrowsmith" <si***@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:gL*******@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...

By the way, you _do_ realize that your "&" characters should be escaped
as "&amp;", don't you?

No they shouldn't. They part of the url, which is (IIRC) a CDATA
attribute of the A element, not PCDATA.

It is CDATA but ampersands still need to be escaped.

Exactly. See
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/appendix/...rsands-in-uris

Bye,
Walter Dörwald

[Richie Hindle]

[Kiana]

<a href="http://bbc.botany.utoronto.ca/[...]?input=&max=2[...]">
[Lawrence] By the way, you _do_ realize that your "&" characters should be escaped
as "&amp;", don't you?
[Sion] No they shouldn't. They part of the url, which is (IIRC) a CDATA
attribute of the A element, not PCDATA.

The W3C validator at http://validator.w3.org/ disagrees with you. It
accepts this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML
4.01//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html><head><title>Test</title></head>
<body>
<p><a href="http://somewhere.com?a=1&amp;b=2">link</a></p>
</body></html>

but rejects this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML
4.01//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html><head><title>Test</title></head>
<body>
<p><a href="http://somewhere.com?a=1&b=2">link</a></p>
</body></html>

saying "cannot generate system identifier for general entity "b" [...] The
most common cause of this error is unencoded ampersands in URLs".

--
Richie Hindle
ri****@entrian.com

[Sion Arrowsmith]

Richard Brodie <R.******@rl.ac.uk> wrote:

"Sion Arrowsmith" <si***@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:gL*******@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
[ ... ]

By the way, you _do_ realize that your "&" characters should be escaped
as "&amp;", don't you?

No they shouldn't. They part of the url, which is (IIRC) a CDATA
attribute of the A element, not PCDATA.

It is CDATA but ampersands still need to be escaped.

I'll take back that "shouldn't" as per Fredrik's post. Maybe they
*should* be escaped, but they don't *need* to be. I've never, and
never seen, anyone doing that in a decade of writing cgi; a straw poll
of peers suggests that the majority would write the former; and I've
never encountred a browser getting tripped up by it. I suppose you
might need it if you've got parameters called quot or nbsp, but it's
hardly the most broken way of writing HTML.

--
\S -- si***@chiark.greenend.org.uk -- http://www.chaos.org.uk/~sion/
___ | "Frankly I have no feelings towards penguins one way or the other"
\X/ | -- Arthur C. Clarke
her nu becomeþ se bera eadward ofdun hlæddre heafdes bæce bump bump bump

[and-google]

Sion Arrowsmith wrote:

I've never encountred a browser getting tripped up by it. I suppose you
might need it if you've got parameters called quot or nbsp

There are many more entities than you can comfortably remember, and
browsers can interpret anything starting with one as being an entity
reference, hence all the problems with parameters like 'section' (->
&sect;). Plus of course there's nothing stopping future browsers
supporting more entities, breaking your apps.

Just write &amp;. There's no reason not to (except ignorance). The fact
that so much of the web is written with broken HTML is not an argument
for doing the same.

--
And Clover
mailto:an*@doxdesk.com
http://www.doxdesk.com/

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In article <e7**********@blackmamba.itd.rl.ac.uk>,
"Richard Brodie" <R.******@rl.ac.uk> wrote:

"Sion Arrowsmith" <si***@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:gL*******@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...

By the way, you _do_ realize that your "&" characters should be escaped
as "&amp;", don't you?

No they shouldn't. They part of the url, which is (IIRC) a CDATA
attribute of the A element, not PCDATA.

It is CDATA but ampersands still need to be escaped.

I believe it's common for CGI argument-parsing routines to accept ";" as
a synonym for "&" as the argument separator. Certainly the code I use
does.