str - Function, Class or Method

Question

I can write 'something '.strip() and get something in return or I can type str(8) and get '8' in return. Also, type ('a') returns str as the response. Is str a function (which converted a numeric 8 to '8' ) or a class, which has methods such as strip() , etc.?

Answer 1

It is a class, whose constructor can get any Python object, and attempts to convert that to a string according to rules built-in the language.

The first thing it tries to do is to call the __str__ method in the passed in object. If that does not exist, it tries to call the __repr__ method. Whatever is returned is used as the new built string.

However, str is trully the string class in Python, were all string methods are defined.

Answer 2

str is a class. As seen in the documentation

str(8) # returns '8'

Is creating an object of type str . It calls str 's constructor. Which in turn calls the objects __str__ function.

As suggested in the comments, you can take a closer look at what's happens using the type keyword:

type(str)             # <class 'type'>
type(str())           # <class 'str'>
type('Hello, World!') # <class 'str'>
type(8)               # <class 'int'>
type(str(8))          # <class 'str'>
type(str().strip)     # <class 'builtin_function_or_method'>