[Python-3000] UPDATED: PEP 3138- String representation in Python 3000

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Wed May 28 01:21:31 CEST 2008


Blake Winton wrote:
> Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> While it could be argued that if you want unambiguous output you 
>> should be invoking repr() on the container instead of str(), I'm still 
>> seeing many more downsides than upsides to the idea of making str() on 
>> the builtin containers display their contents with str() instead of 
>> repr().
> 
> But which downsides do you see that aren't solved by the use of repr to 
> get unambiguous output?

The fact that calling str() on containers has been unambiguous for 
years. All I'm saying is that no compelling use cases have been 
presented to justify changing the status quo (aside from the Unicode 
escaping problem, which is better addressed by allowing repr() to return 
arbitrary Unicode glyphs as proposed by PEP 3138, since that also fixes 
a bunch of other cases where repr() is invoked on Unicode strings).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------
             http://www.boredomandlaziness.org


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