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pythonrepr

Why doesn't this __repr__ function return a string?

class Person:
    greeting = 'Hello'
    def __repr__(self):
        return self.greeting

>>> Sam = Person()
>>> Sam.greeting
'Hello'
>>> Sam
Hello

I am having difficulty understanding why the __repr__ function returns self.greeting without quotes. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Solution

  • The REPL outputs the repr of the object.

    If you say

    >>> 'Hello'

    The repr of "Hello" is displayed, which is "'Hello'"

    Since you are returning Hello rather than 'Hello' - that is what is displayed in the REPL

    If you want the Person.repr to work like normal string repr, you can just call repr on self.greeting

    >>> class Person:
...     greeting = 'Hello'
...     def __repr__(self):
...         return repr(self.greeting)
... 
>>> Sam = Person()
>>> Sam
'Hello'