According to the official Python documentation, __repr__ is a built-in function used to compute the “official” string reputation of an object, while __str__ is a built-in function that computes the “informal” string representations of an object. So both __repr__ and __str__ are used to represent objects, but in different ways. The best way to understand the difference between these two functions is to see them in action:
>>>x=4 >>>repr(x) ‘4’ >>>str(x) ‘4’ >>>y=‘stringy’ >>>repr(y) “‘stringy'” >>>str(y) ‘stringy’
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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.