double quotes in string representation

Question

This snippet:

formatter = \"%r %r %r %r\"
print formatter % (
    \"I had this thing.\",
    \"That you could type up right.\",
    \"But it didn\'t sing.\"         


        

Answer 1

Python is clever; it'll use double quotes for strings that contain single quotes when generating the representation, to minimize escapes:

>>> 'no quotes'
'no quotes'
>>> 'one quote: \''
"one quote: '"

Add a double quote in there as well and it'll revert back to single quotes and escape any single quotes contained:

>>> 'two quotes: \'\"'
'two quotes: \'"'