Using __str__ representation for printing objects in containers in Python

Question

I\'ve noticed that when an instance with an overloaded __str__ method is passed to the print function as an argument, it prints as intended. Howeve

Answer 1

Because when you print the list, generally you're looking from the programmer's perspective, or debugging. If you meant to display the list, you'd process its items in a meaningful way, so repr is used.

If you want your objects to be printed while in containers, define repr

class MyObject:
    def __str__(self): return ""

    __repr__ = __str__

Of course, repr should return a string that could be used as code to recreate your object, but you can do what you want.