Printing a list using python

Question

I have a list compiled from excel cells, using python - say listlist. Each element in the cell/list is in unicode. When I print the list as

print listlist

I see 'u' prepended to each member of the list. But when I print the list like

for member in listlist:
  print member

I do not see the 'u' prepended to the member.

Can someone please explain to me why there is this difference? Is it defined in the xlrd module?

Answer 1

This is because print list is equivalent to

print "[", ", ".join(repr(i) for i in list), "]"

repr(s) is u"blabla" for a unicode string while print s prints only blabla.

Answer 2

When printing the list, it shows each object within the list using the object's __repr__

When printing the object alone, it uses the object's __str__