Preventing Escape Sequence Interpretation in Python

Python Escape Sequence Interpretation

There are instances where we don’t want the strings to behave in this way. In those cases, we generally want to preserve the backslashes. Some of the situations in which this may be required are:

The string contains a Network or Local path
The string contains regex, which would further be processed by the regex engine

Methods of Preventing Python Escape Sequence

Here are a few methods demonstrating the prevention of Escape Sequences in Python.

Method 1: Using double Backslashe (\\)

Consistently doubling the backslashes, also allows us to overcome such issues. In this method, we manually find every single backslash in the string and concatenate another backslash to it (at its immediate position). Generally, a tedious method, and only advised if the string size is less.

Python3

# sample string
s = "I love to use \t instead of using 4 spaces"
 
# normal output
print(s)
 
# doubling line backslashes
s = "I love to use \\t instead of using 4 spaces"
 
# output after doubling
print(s)

Output:

I love to use      instead of using 4 spaces
I love to use \t instead of using 4 spaces

Method 2: Using Raw String

r’….’ or R’…..’ construct, commonly referred to as raw strings, is used to preserve the escape sequences as literals. Such that it does what the previous method did but automatically (does not require human intervention). For turning a normal string into a raw string, prefix the string (before the quote) with an r or R. This is the method of choice for overcoming this escape sequence problem.

Python3

s = "C:\Program Files\norton\appx"
 
# normal output
print(s)
 
# changing the string into a raw string
s = r"C:\Program Files\norton\appx"
 
# Outputting the raw version of the string
print(s)

Output:

C:\Program Files
ortonppx
C:\Program Files\norton\appx

Method 3: Using repr() function

The repr() function does not interpret the escape sequence in Python. It returns the object in its printable format.

Python3

str = "I \nlove \tw3wiki"
print(repr(str))

Output:

I 
love     w3wiki
'I \nlove \tw3wiki'