String of strings for arbitrary amount, python

Question

Say we have a list whose elements are string items. So for example, x = ['dogs', 'cats'].

How could one go about making a new string "'dogs', 'cats'" for an arbitrary number of items in list x?

In particular: Are you happy treating them exactly the same way that Python's repr function does (basically, that means replacing the outer quotes with double quotes if that's sufficient, backslash-escaping quotes if not), or do you want different rules? — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 21:05

Ashwini Chaudhary · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-18 20:56:07Z

3

Use str.join and repr:

>>> x = ['dogs', 'cats']
>>> ", ".join(map(repr,x))
"'dogs', 'cats'"

or:

>>> ", ".join([repr(y) for y in x])
"'dogs', 'cats'"

answered Jun 18, 2013 at 20:56

Ashwini Chaudhary

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1 Comment

Thank you, this works for me. Still trying to figure out difference between repr and str.

Andrew Clark · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-18 20:57:07Z

2

I would use the following:

', '.join(repr(s) for s in x)

answered Jun 18, 2013 at 20:57

Andrew Clark

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John La Rooy · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-18 22:05:38Z

1

For this special case, this is ~17 times faster than ", ".join()

>>> x = "['dogs', 'cats']"
>>> repr(x)[1:-1]
"'dogs', 'cats'"

answered Jun 18, 2013 at 21:01

John La Rooy

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