Unrecognized escape sequences in string literals

[Douglas Alan]

On Aug 11, 4:38 pm, Ethan Furman <et... at stoneleaf.us> wrote:

> Mind you, I'm not really vested in how Python *should* handle
> backslashes one way or the other, but I am glad it has rules that it
> follows for consitent results, and I don't have to break out a byte-code
> editor to find out what's in my string literal.

I don't understand your comment. C++ generates a warning if you use an
undefined escape sequence, which indicates that your program should be
fixed. If the escape sequence isn't undefined, then C++ does the same
thing as Python.

It would be *even* better if C++ generated a fatal error in this
situation. (g++ probably has an option to make warnings fatal, but I
don't happen to know what that option is.) g++ might not generate an
error so that you can compile legacy C code with it.

In any case, my argument has consistently been that Python should have
treated undefined escape sequences consistently as fatal errors, not
as warnings.

|>ouglas