The Hidden Debugging Shortcut in Python F-Strings

We've all written quick print statements like print(f"user_id: {user_id}") to debug our Python code. But there is a much cleaner, built-in shortcut that saves you from typing out the variable name twice. If you add an equal sign = inside the curly braces after the variable name, Python will automatically print both the expression and its evaluated value.

For example, print(f"{user_id=}") will output user_id=42. It even preserves whitespace and works with expressions, like f"{len(users)=}". It’s a tiny syntax trick that makes quick-and-dirty debugging incredibly satisfying.