Is this a bug of str.join?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 16Feb2011 12:01, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
| On 2/16/2011 1:32 AM, fireinice wrote:
| >I'm sorry, I found it should be the terminal width caused visual
| >problem, please kindly ignore this post.
| 
| For future reference, the way to get more info about what is really
| in a string is to print its repr(), or even its list() version.
| Len() is also helpful. On Windows, both the Command Prompt window
| and IDLE refuse to expand tabs, so
| 
| >>> s='\t'.join(('a','b','c'))
| >>> str(s)
| 'a\tb\tc'
| >>> repr(s)
| "'a\\tb\\tc'"
| >>> len(s)
| 5
| >>> list(s)
| ['a', '\t', 'b', '\t', 'c']

And on UNIX, a common way to inspect program output at the character
level is like this:

  python my_python-program | od -c

possibly sent off into a temp file. That will let you see what character
are actually escaping from the program (versus terry's suggestion, which
is good for looking at the characters before they escape).

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

I'm not making any of this up you know. - Anna Russell