format - String formatting in Python version earlier than 2.6

Question

When I run the following code in Python 2.5.2:

for x in range(1, 11):
    print '{0:2d} {1:3d} {2:4d}'.format(x, x*x, x*x*x)

I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#9>", line 2, in <module>
    print '{0:2d} {1:3d} {2:4d}'.format(x, x*x, x*x*x)
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'format'

I don't understand the problem.

From dir('hello') there is no format attribute.

How can I solve this?

Answer 1

The str.format method was introduced in Python 3.0, and backported to Python 2.6 and later.