Python Built-in Misc Functions

The Python interpreter has some built-in misc. form functions.

ascii()

ascii(object)

Parameters

ascii()to return a string containing a printable representation of an object. objectto specify the object to be returned from.

Remarks

• To return a printable ASCII representation string
• escape the non-ASCII characters in the string returned by repr() using \x, \u or \U escapes.

format()

format(value[, format_spec])

Parameters

format()to return a formatted representation of specified value. valueto specify a value to be returned from [format_spec]optional, to specify the format_spec of the value to be returned.

Remarks

• The interpretation of format_spec will depend on the type of the value argument, however there is a standard formatting syntax that is used by most built-in types: Format Specification Mini-Language.
• The default format_spec is an empty string which usually gives the same effect as calling str(value)
• A call to format(value, format_spec) is translated to type(value).__format__(value, format_spec) which bypasses the instance dictionary when searching for the value's __format__() method.
• A TypeError exeception is raised if the method search reaches object and the format_spec is non-empty, or if either the format_spec or the return value are not strings.

repr()

repr(object)

Parameters

repr()to return a printable string representation of an object. objectto specify the object to be returned from

Remarks

• Return a string containing a printable representation of an object. For many types, this function makes an attempt to return a string that would yield an object with the same value when passed to eval(), otherwise the representation is a string enclosed in angle brackets that contains the name of the type of the object together with additional information often including the name and address of the object. A class can control what this function returns for its instances by defining a __repr__() method.

Source and Reference

• https://docs.python.org/3/reference/executionmodel.html
• https://docs.python.org/2.0/ref/execframes.html
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/classmethod-in-python/
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#typesmapping