What is the equivalent of php's print_r() in python?

Question

Or is there a better way to quickly output the contents of an array (multidimensional or what not). Thanks.

Answer 1

Check out pprint module.

Answer 2

The python print statement does a good job of formatting multidimesion arrays without requiring the print_r available in php.

As the definition for print states that each object is converted to a string, and as simple arrays print a '[' followed by a comma separated list of object values followed by a ']', this will work for any depth and shape of arrays.

For example

>>> x = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]
>>> print x
[[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]

If you need more advanced formatting than this, AJs answer suggesting pprint is probably the way to go.

Answer 3

print and pprint are great for built-in data types or classes which define a sane object representation. If you want a full dump of arbitrary objects, you'll have to roll your own. That is not that hard: simply create a recursive function with the base case being any non-container built-in data type, and the recursive case applying the function to each item of a container or each attribute of the object, which can be gotten using dir() or the inspect module.