Need help understanding list structure
moa47401 at gmail.com
moa47401 at gmail.com
Mon May 2 18:33:25 EDT 2016
> When Python's "print" statement/function is invoked, it will print the
> textual representation of the object according to its class's __str__ or
> __repr__ method. That is, the print function prints out whatever text
> the class says it should.
>
> For classes which don't implement a __str__ or __repr__ method, then
> the text "<CLASS object at ADDRESS>" is used - where CLASS is the class
> name and ADDRESS is the "memory pointer".
>
> > If I iterate over the list, I do get the actual text of each element
> > and am able to use it.
> >
> > Also, if I iterate over the list and place each element in a new list
> > using append, then each element in the new list is the text I expect
> > not memory pointers.
>
> Look at the __iter__ method of the class of the object you are iterating
> over. I suspect that it returns string objects, not the objects that are
> in the list itself.
>
> String objects have a __str__ or __repr__ method that represents them as
> the text, so that is what 'print' will output.
>
> Hope that helps, E.
Yes, that does help. You're right. The author of the library I'm using didn't implement either a __str__ or __repr__ method. Am I correct in assuming that parsing a large text file would be quicker returning pointers instead of strings? I've never run into this before.
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