Hi, in my experience for many cases, __repr__ and __str__ can be unconditionally be represented as simple string formatting operation, so i would propose to add a extension to support simply declaring them in the form of newstyle format strings a basic implementation for __repr__ could look like: class SelfFormatter(string.Formatter): def __init__(self, obj): self.__obj = obj string.Formatter.__init__(self) def get_value(self, key, args, kwargs): if isinstance(key, str) and hasattr(self.__obj, key): return getattr(self.__obj, key) return Formatter.get_value(self, key, args, kwargs) class SimpleReprMixing(object): _repr_ = '<{__class__.__name__} at 0x{__id__!x}>' def __repr__(self): formatter = SelfFormatter(self) return formatter.vformat(self._repr_, (), {'__id__':id(self)}) -- Ronny Pfannschmidt