yes, that's because this implementation uses Python's 3 str.format way, take a look at usage example and I don't plan to change it. For old % way I would suggest using other fork like dailyinsight/MySQL-for-Python-3

I don't agree that anything str.format offers has any business in a database query. The current str.format implementation also breaks compatibility with programs expecting identical usage to MySQLdb for Python 2.x. For example, using this module with django 1.6, it expects to be able to do:

c.execute("SELECT * FROM table WHERE x=%s", ("test",))

But cannot. Additionally, through using the "old" % method, you could already do what is displayed in the Usage example:

c.execute("SELECT * FROM table WHERE x=%(myvalue)s", {"myvalue":"test"})

It's not really related to database itself, but to this library. For different languages there's different ways how to implement parameter queries. Anyway full story why format is used and not % is that I ported this library very early when Py3 was released and then % modifier was removed. They added it back later, but I already had went with format. Also when I ported this library I dropped all support for Py2 and it never was meant to be compatible with original MySQLdb. And personally like format better than %. I would accept PR if both ways would work as currently this library have been using format for few years and I'm not going to drop that. And yeah I know that with % same results can be achieved, but it's just this new Py3 syntax which here is used.