Michael P. Soulier wrote: > I thought that the distinction was as follows. > > str() should return a human-readable representation of something. > > repr() should return a machine-readable representation of something, suitable > for an exec command.
As Michael pointed out, this is totally impractical in the majority of cases. The guideline I use is quite different: str() is for normal program output, repr() is for debugging output. To expand a bit more: repr() should return something that unambiguously indicates the *type* of the object. If something about the value can be indicated as well without being too verbose, that's a bonus, but it's not the most important thing. I suggest that the passage in the docs about repr() output being eval-able be deleted, since it misleads more than it helps, and replaced with something to the above effect. BTW, these days I normally don't bother giving my classes a __repr__ at all, and just make do with the default <someclass instance at 0xXXXXX>. If I want to know anything more, I insert prints at the appropriate place to probe the object further. Anyway, -1 on combining them. In my view they *do* serve two very clearly distinct purposes -- just not the ones the docs say! -- Greg _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
