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copied!<blockquote> <p>why did the last line get the correct output, and the others didn't?</p> </blockquote> <p>When you <code>print foo</code>, what gets printed out is <code>str(foo)</code>.</p> <p>However, if <code>foo</code> is a <code>list</code>, <code>str(foo)</code> uses <code>repr(bar)</code> for each element <code>bar</code>, not <code>str(bar)</code>.</p> <p>The <code>str</code> of a string is the string itself; the <code>repr</code> of a string is the string inside quotes, and escaped.</p> <blockquote> <p>how do I correct the wrong ones</p> </blockquote> <p>If you want to print the <code>str</code> of every element in a <code>list</code>, you have to do that explicitly. For example:</p> <pre><code>print '[' + ', '.join(["asdf", "中文"]) + ']' </code></pre> <hr> <p>There have been sporadic proposals to change this behavior, so <code>str</code> on a sequence calls <code>str</code> on its members. <a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3140/" rel="nofollow">PEP 3140</a> is the rejected proposal. <a href="http://code.activestate.com/lists/python-ideas/20009/" rel="nofollow">This thread from 2009</a> explains the design rationale behind rejecting it. </p> <p>But primarily, it's either so these don't print the same thing:</p> <pre><code>a = 'foo, bar' b = 'foo' c = 'bar' print [a] print [b, c] </code></pre> <p>Or, paraphrasing Ned Batchelder: <code>repr</code> is always for geeks; <code>str</code> is for humans when possible, but printing lists with their brackets and commas is already for geeks.</p>

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