Escaping the semicolon?

[Mel]

Nick wrote:
> Is this expected behavior?
> 
>>>> s = '123;abc'
>>>> s.replace(';', '\;')
> '123\\;abc'
> 
> I just wanted a single backslash. I can see why this probably happens
> but i wondered if it is definitely intentional.

What you're seeing on the screen is a "literalization" of the string 
value for the sake of the display.  Consider

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, May  2 2007, 16:56:35)
[GCC 4.1.2 (Ubuntu 4.1.2-0ubuntu4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
 >>> s = '123;abc'
 >>> b = s.replace(';', '\;')
 >>> b
'123\\;abc'
 >>> len(b)
8


The length suggests that there's only one backslash in the string.


	Mel.

On the other hand

 >>> repr(b)
"'123\\\\;abc'"

Isn't what I expected.  No, wait, it is.  It's the value of repr(b) 
repred by the Python display logic.

	MPW