[Tutor] Python file escaping issue?

[Sithembewena Lloyd Dube]

I believe i encountered repr()in the Python tutorial, but i had not kept the
relevance of it in my memory..

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:35 PM, Sithembewena Lloyd Dube
<zebra05 at gmail.com>wrote:

> @spr, thanks for the explanation, especially on representations of strings.
> To think that i freely used repr(variable_x) without fully understanding the
> meaning and the power of that function..
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:37 AM, spir <denis.spir at free.fr> wrote:
>
>> Just a little complement to Steven's excellent explanation:
>>
>> On Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:01:06 +1100
>> Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > So if you write a pathname like this:
>> >
>> > >>> path = 'C:\datafile.txt'
>> > >>> print path
>> > C:\datafile.txt
>> > >>> len(path)
>> > 15
>> >
>> > It *seems* to work, because \d is left as backlash-d. But then you do
>> > this, and wonder why you can't open the file:
>>
>> I consider this misleading, since it can only confuse newcomers. Maybe
>> "lonely" single backslashes (not forming a "code" with following
>> character(s)) should be invalid. Meaning literal backslashes would always be
>> doubled (in plain, non-raw, strings). What do you think?
>>
>> > But if the escape is not a special character:
>> >
>> > >>> s = 'abc\dz'  # nothing special
>> > >>> print s
>> > abc\dz
>> > >>> print repr(s)
>> > 'abc\\dz'
>> > >>> len(s)
>> > 6
>> >
>> > The double backslash is part of the *display* of the string, like the
>> > quotation marks, and not part of the string itself. The string itself
>> > only has a single backslash and no quote marks.
>>
>> This "display" is commonly called "representation", thus the name of the
>> function repr(). It is a string representation *for the programmer* only,
>> both on input and output:
>> * to allow one writing, in code itself, string literal constants
>> containing special characters, in a practical manner (eg file pathes/names)
>> * to allow one checking the actual content of string values, at testing
>> time
>>
>> The so-called interactive interpreter outputs representations by default.
>> An extreme case:
>> >>> s = "\\"
>> >>> s
>> '\\'
>> >>> print s, len(s)
>> \ 1
>> >>> print repr(s), len(repr(s))
>> '\\' 4
>> >>>
>> The string holds 1 char; its representation (also a string, indeed) holds
>> 4.
>>
>> > The best advice is to remember that Windows allows both forward and
>> > backwards slashes as the path separator, and just write all your paths
>> > using the forward slash:
>> >
>> > 'C:/directory/'
>> > 'C:textfile.txt'
>>
>> Another solution is to take the habit to always escape '\' by doubling it.
>>
>>
>> Denis
>> ________________________________
>>
>> la vita e estrany
>>
>> http://spir.wikidot.com/
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>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Sithembewena Lloyd Dube
> http://www.lloyddube.com
>



-- 
Regards,
Sithembewena Lloyd Dube
http://www.lloyddube.com
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