CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonescaping
user4723845
user4723845

Reputation: 151

Python escaping backslash

I'm trying to escape the backslash, but trying to understand the right way of doing it

foo = r'C:\Users\test.doc'

The above works fine

However, when I want to escape the path stored in a variable

For example :

parser.add_argument('-s', '--source', type = str, help = 'Source file path')

Now, how do escape the value in - args.source

Upvotes: 3

Views: 35016

Answers (1)

Tresdon
Tresdon

Reputation: 1211

So there are a few escape sequences to be aware of in python and they are mainly these.

enter image description here

So when the string for that file location is parsed by the add_argument method it may not be interpreted as a raw string like you've declared and there will be no way to escape the backslashes outside of the declaration.

What you can do instead is to keep it as a regular string (removing the 'r' prefix from the string) and using the escape character for a backslash in any places there may be conflict with another escape character (in this case \t). This may work as the method may evaluate the string correctly.

Try declaring your string like this.

foo = "C:\Users\\test.doc"

Hopefully this helps fix your issue!

EDIT:

In response to handling the dynamic file location you could maybe do something like the following!

def clean(s):
    s = s.replace("\t", "\\t")
    s = s.replace("\n", "\\n")
    return s

Until you've covered all of your bases with what locations you may need to work with! This solution might be more appropriate for your needs. It's kind of funny I didn't think of doing it this way before. Hopefully this helps!

Upvotes: 5

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