"Jan Danielsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sorry, but I Just Don't Get It. I did search the 'net, I did read the > FAQ, but I'm too dumb to understand. > > As far as I can gather, __str__ is just a representation of the > object. For instance: > > class ServerConnection: > def __str__(self): > buf = "Server: " + self.name + "\n" > buf += "Sent bytes: " + str(self.sentBytes) + "\n" > buf += "Recv bytes: " + str(self.recvBytes) + "\n" > return buf > > However, I don't understand what __repr__ should be. There's a phrase > in the documentation which makes it highly confusing for a beginner like > me: "If at all possible, this should look like a valid Python expression > that could be used to recreate an object with the same value (given an > appropriate environment).". What does that mean? Does it mean that I > should return: > > def __str__(self): > buf = "self.name=" + self.name + "\n" > buf += "self.sentBytes=" + str(self.sentBytes) + "\n" > buf += "self.recvBytes=" + str(self.recvBytes) + "\n" > return buf > > ..or is there some other "valid Python expression" format which I > have yet to encounter?
str() should be something that's meaningful to a human being when it's printed or otherwise rendered. repr() should be something that can round trip: that is, if you feed it into eval() it should reproduce the object. You can't always achieve either one, especially with very complex objects, but that's the goal. John Roth -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
