Python 3: In this case print(a) calls a.__str__() which happens to default to calling a.__repr__() because a doesn't have an __str__ attribute. a[0] is equiva

Python 3: In this case print(a) calls a.__str__() which happens to default to calling a.__repr__() because a doesn't have an __str__ attribute. a[0] is equivalent to a.__getitem__(0) That's because the __repr__ of a bytes object instance formats the result into a human readable representation of the data which should ideally be identical to the syntax needed to create the instance, whereas the __getitem__ method returns a "real" and machine usable representation. Try it... >>> a b'abc' >>> a.__str__() "b'abc'" >>> a.__repr__() "b'abc'" >>> a.__getitem__(0) 97