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copied!<p>In Python both <a href="http://docs.python.org/reference/lexical_analysis.html#strings" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><code>'string'</code> and <code>"string"</code> are used to represent string literals</a>. It's not like Java where single and double quotes represent different data types to the compiler. </p> <p>The interpreter evaluates each line you enter and displays this value to you. In both cases the interpreter is evaluating what you enter, getting a string, and displaying this value. The default way of displaying strings is in single quotes so both times the string is displayed enclosed in single quotes. </p> <p>It does seem odd - in that it breaks Python's rule of <a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it</em></a> - but I think disallowing one of the options would have been worse.</p> <p>You can also enter a string literal using triple quotes:</p> <pre><code>>>> """characters ... and ... newlines""" 'characters\nand\nnewlines' </code></pre> <p>You can use the command line to confirm that these are the same thing:</p> <pre><code>>>> type("characters") <type 'str'> >>> type('characters') <type 'str'> >>> "characters" == 'characters' True </code></pre> <p>The interpreter uses the <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1984162/purpose-of-pythons-repr"><code>__repr__</code> method</a> of an object to get the display to print to you. So on your own objects you can determine how they are displayed in the interpreter. We can't change the <code>__repr__</code> method for built in types, but we can customise the interpreter output <a href="http://docs.python.org/library/sys.html#sys.displayhook" rel="nofollow noreferrer">using <code>sys.displayhook</code></a>:</p> <pre><code>>>> import sys >>> def customoutput(value): ... if isinstance(value,str): ... print '"%s"' % value ... else: ... sys.__displayhook__(value) ... >>> sys.displayhook = customoutput >>> 'string' "string" </code></pre>

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