Simulating call of instance like a list or tuple

[Jason Orendorff]

> It seems everyone is thinking that I want __repr__ or __str__, which is in
> the right  vein, but not quite it.  I want the same functionality, but I
> want to be able to return something other than a string.  I don't think it
> exists outside of the built-in classes.

All the built-in types use __repr__ to do this, and they
all return strings.

Your __repr__ method should figure out the value you want to print,
then convert it to a string.

class MyClass:
    def __repr__(self):
        # Here's the data I want to display...
        data = self.my_data
        # Now convert it to a string and return that.
        return repr(data)

>>> x = MyClass()
>>> x.my_data = (3, 4, 'Poughkeepsie', 2.71828, u'\N{DAGGER}\N{BULLET}')
>>> x
(3, 4, 'Poughkeepsie', 2.71828, u'\u2020\u2022')

## Jason Orendorff    http://www.jorendorff.com/