[Python-3000] Types and classes

[Terry Reedy]

"Greg Ewing" <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message 
news:47FAD002.8080306 at canterbury.ac.nz...
| Terry Reedy wrote:
|
| > As in
| >
| >>>>print(type(3))
| >
| > int  # instead of <class 'int'>
|
| I have the same feeling there -- the only time I'm
| likely to be deliberately printing a class is for
| debugging, and then I want unambiguity.

Unfortunately, *any* text printed for any object *could* have been the 
value of a string object.  With str(), ambiguity is rife:
>>> a = '1'
>>> b = 1
>>> print(a,b)
1 1

So if you want unabmiguity for debugging, repr() is better since strings 
and only strings are surrounded by quotes.
>>> print(repr(a),repr(b))
'1' 1

Guido only suggested the possibility of a more-friendly abbreviation for 
str, not for repr.  When one calls type(x), one *knows* the answer is a 
class, so the boilerplate template is often redundant and unnecessary. 
Consider the current
>>> print('Expected', type(a), '; got', type(b))
Expected  <type 'str'> ; got <type 'int'>
-or future-
Expected <class 'str'> ; got <class 'int'>

I would like to have the option of getting more normal looking text like
   Expected str ; got int
without having to parse away the added boilerplate.  If I wanted 'class' in 
the output, I might prefer to put it in the strings to get
   Expected class str ; got class int
without the brackets.

Should print() have an option to convert with repr instead of str?

Terry Jan Reedy