> By the way, why are bothering to create a variable rather than just
> returning the result of `format`? I'd expect the optimizer to
> optimize it out so that it won't matter, but it seems kind of
> pointless to create a variable and then immediately return it.
> 

Because it made the formatting slightly more consistent (nicer)
back in the earlier revision when I was making two calls to format.

That's the only reason ;)