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pythonshellmagic-methodsrepr

How to print __repr__ in a Python3 file? (not in shell)

I know that in Python Shell when you type >>> object it shows the object.__repr__ method and if you type >>> print(object) it shows the object.__str__ method.

But my question is, is there a short way to print __repr__ while executing a Python file?

I mean, in a file.py if I use print(object) it will show object.__str__ and if I just type object it shows nothing.

I have tried using print(object.__repr__) but it prints <bound method object.__repr__ of reprReturnValue>

Or is this impossible?

Solution

  • If you just want to print the representation and nothing else, then 

    print(repr(object))

    will print the representation. Where your invocation went wrong were the missing parentheses, as the following works as well:

    print(object.__repr__())

    If however you want this to be part of more information and you are using string formatting, you don't need to call repr(), you can use the conversion flag !r 

    print('The representation of the object ({0!r}) for printing,'
      ' can be obtained without using "repr()"'.format(object))