All 15 Magic Methods & Operator Overloading questions
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What are 'magic methods' (dunder methods) in Python, and why are they called that? How does __repr__ help with debugging when printing a list of custom objects? How do you overload arithmetic operators like + and - using __add__ and __sub__? What do __eq__ and __hash__ need to satisfy together, and what happens if you only override __eq__? How do __len__, __getitem__, and __setitem__ let a custom class act like a sequence or mapping? How does __call__ let an instance of a class be invoked like a function? How do comparison magic methods like __lt__, __le__, __gt__, and __ge__ support custom sorting? How does __contains__ let you customize the behavior of the 'in' operator? How do you implement custom attribute access with __getattr__ versus __getattribute__? How do context manager magic methods __enter__ and __exit__ work, and what does __exit__'s return value control?
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What is the difference between __str__ and __repr__?

Beginner

Answer

__str__ should return a readable, user-facing string (used by print() and str()), while __repr__ should return an unambiguous, ideally eval-able representation useful for debugging (used by the REPL and repr()). If __str__ is not defined, Python falls back to __repr__ for str() and print().
class Point:
    def __init__(self, x, y):
        self.x, self.y = x, y
    def __repr__(self):
        return f'Point(x={self.x}, y={self.y})'
    def __str__(self):
        return f'({self.x}, {self.y})'

p = Point(1, 2)
print(str(p))   # (1, 2)
print(repr(p))  # Point(x=1, y=2)
Real-world example In a debugging session, a list of custom objects printed in the console shows each item's __repr__, making it crucial to implement a clear, informative __repr__ for every domain model class.

Common follow-ups: What does Python use when only __repr__ is defined?;Why should __repr__ ideally be eval-able?

Magic Methods & Operator Overloading;Debugging & Profiling
All 15 Magic Methods & Operator Overloading questions