CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythoncommand-line
user442920
user442920

Reputation: 847

python string ' " ' : single double quote inside string

A double quote looks like this ". If I put this inside a python string I get this ' " '. In python, I can put two double quotes in a string ' "" ' and this gets printed as two double quotes. However, I cannot put a single double quote in a string, as before, ' " '. I am doing this in eclipse with pydev and it gives an error: "encountered "\r" (13), after : "". I am trying to do the following with command pipe and file names:

logA = 'thing.txt'
cmdpipe = os.popen('copy "C:\upe\' + logA + '"' + ' "C:\upe\log.txt"')

Upvotes: 6

Views: 7145

Answers (3)

Sebastian Bartos
Sebastian Bartos

Reputation: 2497

You need to escape the backslashes, otherwise it will do odd things.

logA = 'thing.txt'
cmdpipe = os.popen(
    'copy "C:\\upe\\' + logA + '"' + ' "C:\\upe\\log.txt"')

Edit: A more pythonic way would be this though:

logA = 'thing.txt'
cmdpipe = os.popen('copy "C:\\upe\\{}" "C:\\upe\\log.txt"'.format(logA))

Upvotes: 2

heltonbiker
heltonbiker

Reputation: 27575

The backslash after upe is escaping the first single quote closing:

'copy "C:\upe\' + logA + '"' + ' "C:\upe\log.txt"'
--------------^ add an escape at least here, and it will work!

Another option is to compose your command in more steps:

basepath = r'C:\upe'
inpath = os.path.join(basepath, logA)
outpath = os.path.join(basepath, 'log.txt')
logA = 'thing.txt'
command = 'copy "%s" "%s"' % (inpath, outpath)

print command

cmdpipe = os.popen(command)

Upvotes: 0

NPE
NPE

Reputation: 500367

You need to escape the backslashes:

logA = 'thing.txt'
cmdpipe = os.popen('copy "C:\\upe\\' + logA + '"' + ' "C:\\upe\\log.txt"')

Typically, one would use raw strings (r'...') when there are backslashes inside a string literal. However, as pointed out by @BrenBarn, this won't work in this case.

Upvotes: 3

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