["python","pretty-print","pprint"]
How do I get Python's pprint to return a string instead of printing?

In other words, what's the sprintf equivalent for pprint?
The pprint module has a function named pformat, for just that purpose. From the documentation: Return the formatted representation of object as a string. indent, width and depth will be passed to the PrettyPrinter constructor as formatting parameters. Example: >>> import pprint >>> people = [ ... {"first": "Brian", "last": "Kernighan"}, ... {"first": "Dennis", "last": "Richie"}, ... ] >>> pprint.pformat(people, indent=4) "[ { 'first': 'Brian', 'last': 'Kernighan'},\n { 'first': 'Dennis', 'last': 'Richie'}]"