Purpose of Python's __repr__

Question

def __repr__(self):
  return '<%s %s (%s:%s) %s>' % (
    self.__class__.__name__, self.urlconf_name, self.app_name,
    self.namespace, self.regex.pattern)

What is the significance/purpose of this method?

Answer 1

An example to see the differences between them (I copied from this source),

>>> x=4
>>> repr(x)
'4'
>>> str(x)
'4'
>>> y='stringy'
>>> repr(y)
"'stringy'"
>>> str(y)
'stringy'

The returns of repr() and str() are identical for int x, but there's a difference between the return values for str y -- one is formal and the other is informal. One of the most important differences between the formal and informal representations is that the default implementation of __repr__ for a str value can be called as an argument to eval, and the return value would be a valid string object, like this:

>>> repr(y)
"'a string'"
>>> y2=eval(repr(y))
>>> y==y2
True

If you try to call the return value of __str__ as an argument to eval, the result won't be valid.