How Does Python's `repr()` Function Create an Evaluatable String Representation of an Object?

Understanding the repr( ) Function in Python

The repr( ) function in Python provides an evaluatable string representation of an object, meaning it can be evaluated to recreate the original object.

Question 1: Why double quotes in repr(x)?

When repr( ) is called on a string, it encloses its string representation in double quotes. This is because repr( ) aims to generate a representation that can be evaluated to produce the original string. Double quotes indicate that the representation is a string object.

Question 2: Why 'foo' instead of x with eval("'foo'")?

Evaluating a string in single quotes, such as eval("'foo'"), treats it as a string literal and returns the string itself, 'foo'. Here, the evaluation does not involve the variable x.

Magical Method __repr__()

Internally, repr( ) calls the __repr__() magic method of the object. This method returns a string representation of the object that can be used to reconstruct it.

String Representation (str( ))

In contrast to repr( ), the str( ) function simply returns the string representation of the object, without the surrounding double quotes. For strings, this results in the original string, as they are already in string format.

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