Simply writing the name of a variable into a string doesn't magically make its contents appear in the string.
>>> p = 'some part'
>>> s = 'replace p of a string'
>>> s
'replace p of a string'
>>> s = 'replace %s of a string' % p
>>> s
'replace some part of a string'
>>> s = 'replace {} of a string'.format(p)
>>> s
'replace some part of a string'
In your case this would mean:
>>> sql = "insert into cust_table (name) values (names) where cust_id IN ('%s')"
>>> ids = ", ".join(id)
>>> cursor.execute(sql % ids)
although I strongly suspect that you have a similar problem with names
.
In order to avoid possible sql injection problems, it would be preferable to use a "parameterized statement". This would look something like:
>>> sql = 'insert into ... where cust_id IN %s'
>>> cursor.execute(sql, (id,))
Some database connectors for python are capable of this, but yours probably isn't.
A workaround might be something like
>>> params = ', '.join(['%s']*len(id))
>>> sql = 'insert into ... where cust_id IN (%s)' % params
>>> cursor.execute(sql, id)