Initialize a string variable in Python: “” or None?

Question

Suppose I have a class with a string instance attribute. Should I initialize this attribute with \"\" value or None? Is either

Answer 1

Another way to initialize an empty string is by using the built-in str() function with no arguments.

str(object='')

Return a string containing a nicely printable representation of an object.

...

If no argument is given, returns the empty string, ''.

In the original example, that would look like this:

def __init__(self, mystr=str())
   self.mystr = mystr

Personally, I believe that this better conveys your intentions.

Notice by the way that str() itself sets a default parameter value of ''.