Coverage remained the same at 93.591% when pullingf06ef73 on roryyorke:rory/iosys-repr intoe8db508 on python-control:master.

I agree that a change would be useful here. More generally, it would be nice to think through what we want to have displayed in various situations:

• __repr__: this is the default display for objects in iPython/Jupyter and is supposed to be something that could, in principle, be used to recreate the object. ForStateSpace systems, for example, this currently gives

StateSpace(array([[ 0.,  1.],       [-1., -2.]]), array([[0.],       [1.]]), array([[1., 0.]]), array([[0.]]))

• __str__: this is what you get when you typeprint(sys) and it gives a more verbose output. The current output for a state space systems is:

A = [[ 0.  1.]     [-1. -2.]]B = [[0.]     [1.]]C = [[1. 0.]]D = [[0.]]

• After PRI/O system enhancements #710 gets merged, creating a system withss will produce aLinearIOSystem, which has a different__str___ representation:

Object: sys[0]Inputs (1): u[0], Outputs (1): y[0], States (2): x[0], x[1], A = [[ 0.  1.]     [-1. -2.]]B = [[0.]     [1.]]C = [[1. 0.]]D = [[0.]]

• We also have a_repr_latex_ method, which gets used in Jupyter notebooks. This produces the following output:

Finally, PR#710 has a conflicting change since I reset therepr format there to include the type and system name. So anInputOutputSystem object has output:

<class 'control.iosys.LinearIOSystem'>: sys[0]

I like the version in this draft PR better, but note that if you get something with lots of inputs and outputs, it could be a bit odd looking.

PR#721 has a portion of this (__repr__) implemented, but leaves the other issues touched on above unchanged. It would be nice to sort out a consistent set of representations that make sense in different environments (eg, Jupyter vs command line).

FYI, Spyder (a nifty little IDE) also uses the_repr_latex_() output
It sure is handy to get your SS in a compact matrix in such editors.

This has been implemented since v0.10.0.