"pickle" vs. f.write()

[Martin Miller]

Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote:
> ...
>
> I write __repr__() methods similar but I think a bit more readable:
>
>   def __repr__(self):
>       return "%s(%r, %r, %r, %r)" % (self.__class__.__name__,
self.name,
>                                      self.age, self.friends,
self.comment)
>
> And it's robust against changing the class name.  It even works in
> subclasses if the signature of the __init__() method stays the same.

Yes, that's an excellent suggestion and improvement.

Saw the following in a post by Steven Bethard on another thread
<http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/ed6b6ba0346e3c80>
that I think would be even better (in the sense of being more
general/generic) which also ought to work in subclasses. Namely:

    def __repr__(self):
        return '%s(%s)' % (self.__class__.__name__,
                           ', '.join('%s=%r' % (k, v)
                                     for k, v
                                     in self.__dict__.items()))

Martin