repr() official string representation of an object in Python

repr(object) 'official' string representation of an object

returns the string data type.

Using set object

We used one set object here.
We can use any type of object and get the string representation of the same.

my_data={5,6,2,4} 
print(type(my_data))  #<class 'set'>
my_data2=repr(my_data)
print(type(my_data2)) #<class 'str'>
print(repr(my_data))  #{5,6,2,4}

Output

<class 'set'>
<class 'str'>
{2, 4, 5, 6}

Using eval()

By using eval() we can get back the object. In above code my_data2 is an string object, using this we can create our original set object.

print(type(eval(my_data2)))

Output

<class 'set'>

Using str()

Our built in function str() also returns the string from the object but here we get the 'informal' or nicely printable string representation of an object. Such returned string may not work with eval().

However repr() is typically used for debugging, so it is important that the representation is information-rich and unambiguous. See this example.

my_str = """Hi"""
print(repr(my_str)) # Output: 'Hi'
print(str(my_str))  # Output: Hi
#eval(str(my_str) == my_str)  # Gives a SyntaxError 
print(eval(repr(my_str)) == my_str) # Output: True

Example using Date object

We created one date object to get the present date and time. Check the difference in output of str() and repr()

import datetime
today = datetime.datetime.now()
print(str(today))  # Output: '2022-05-03 18:36:44.459740'
print(repr(today)) # Output: 'datetime.datetime(2022, 5, 3, 18, 36, 44, 459740)'

Output

2022-05-03 18:36:44.459740
datetime.datetime(2022, 5, 3, 18, 36, 44, 459740)

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Subhendu Mohapatra

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