__str__ vs __repr__

[John Roth]

"Jan Danielsson" <jan.danielsson at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:42b021ba$1 at griseus.its.uu.se...
>  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