__str__ vs. __repr__

[Neel Krishnaswami]

Emile van Sebille <emile at fenx.com> wrote:
>
>It seems to me that issues arise when using the interactive interpreter.
>I suspect that little useful work is done in this mode, and is used
>predominately for quick testing while creating python programs.

I'd like to politely disagree . Combined with Tim Peters and Barry
Warsaw's emacs py-mode, Python's interactive mode is the single most
useful feature of the language for me. With it, I can test each and
every method, loop, and statement as I code. This does wonders for my
understanding of my code. And not incidentally, reliability goes way
up as well.

I learned Perl before Python, but my Python skill surpassed my Perl
skill after a much smaller time investment. I lay this pretty much
wholely at the feet of the interactive interpreter -- I could find out
the answers to puzzles without a tedious edit-save-run cycle.


Neel