Question

Why are p and p8 different in the following code?

The beginning of a view function (in file views.py in a Django app named “proteinSearch” with a model named “Protein” that has a field named “description”):

def searchForProteins2(request, searchStr):
    p8 = Protein.objects.filter( description__icontains=searchStr)

    #Why doesn't this work?????
    p  = Protein.objects.filter( description__icontains=searchStr)

    import pdb; pdb.set_trace()

Interactively in pdb:

    (Pdb) searchStr
    u'centr'
    (Pdb) p8
    [<Protein: IPI00657962.1>, <Protein: IPI00479143.2>, <Protein: IPI00477050.4>, <Protein: IPI00220625.1>,
    95.2>]
    (Pdb) p
    *** SyntaxError: SyntaxError('unexpected EOF while parsing', ('<string>', 0, 0, ''))

Answer 1

When you are in Debugging mode (pdb or ipdb REPL), ‘p’ is meant for a specific functionality, i.e. evaluating an expression expr.

Like,

ipdb> x = 1
ipdb> p x
1
ipdb> p x==True
True
ipdb> p x==1
True

In Django, ‘p’ will simply means a variable.

If you want to print value of ‘p’ variable, try,

ipdb> p p

🙂