[Python-ideas] Changing str(someclass) to return only the class name

[Spectral One]

> If you want the name of the class, ask for its name, not its string 
> representation. Generally speaking, the string representation should 
> tell you what sort of object it is (either explicitly or implicitly), 
> not just its value. 
I agree with this rather generally. I'd also like access to the class 
name, but I don't really like that implementation yet.

A thought:
Could this be reframed as a tweak to the reporting of type objects, 
specifically?
If the __repr__ function of a type object returned the desired class 
information, it seems like it would solve this issue.

Currently,
     print str(type(variable)) # returns a string in the form of
#"'module reference and class name' type.__name__ at address"
     print repr(type(variable)) # returns the same string.
     print type(variable).__name__ # returns "instance" for any user 
variable instances.

However, if we altered repr to return the qualified name, we'd be pretty 
much set, as we already have the __name__ variable in type objects* and 
the __str__ can remain untouched. That would make the information rather 
easily accessed and without special parsing.

(*I'd prefer a short statement to extract that name, too. I could work 
with "print class(variable)" if the parser could. Other options off the 
top o' my noggin: "type.name(variable)" or "variable.__name__" where the 
.__name_ is automatically supplied. (allow overwriting in the class 
definition?))

-Nate