Escape sequence in python giving wrong result

Question

Why does my code-

"She said \"Don't\" panic"

give the result-

'She said "don\'t" panic'

Why is a slash inserted after n in the result? How can i prevent it?

Answer 1

I'm going to assume you're running this in the interpreter. By default, the interpreter uses an object's __repr__() method when printing. However, print() uses __str__().

>>> s = "She said \"Don't\" panic"

>>> s
'She said "Don\'t" panic'

>>> print(s)
She said "Don't" panic

>>> print(s.__str__())
She said "Don't" panic

>>> print(s.__repr__())
'She said "Don\'t" panic'

The __repr__() method will return the string wrapped in '. To differentiate those ' from any within the string, it escapes those inner '.

This has the fun result of

>>> s.__str__()
'she said "Don\'t" panic'

Because it's printing __repr__("She said \"Don't\" panic"), which will wrap that string in ' and escape the inner ones.

Answer 2

When running the string provided above in a python shell, it prints out the raw string returned from the standard __repr__() function which contains the escape character required to include the single quote inside the string.

>>> "She said \"Don't\" panic"
'She said "Don\'t" panic'

You can simply wrap this inside of a print statement, which uses __str__(), to get the returned string you are looking for

>>> print("She said \"Don't\" panic")
She said "Don't" panic

Answer 3

The \t escape character in Python is a Horizontal Tab escape character.

If you're trying to sub-quote the "Don't Panic" within the overall quote, it would be:

"She said 'Don\'t panic'"