Raw strings containing Windows paths produce "SyntaxError: unterminated string literal" [duplicate]

Question

I am trying to use a shutil script I found, but running it triggers:

SyntaxError: unterminated string literal (detected at line 4)

This is maybe related to the script containing raw windows paths. How do I fix the script?

import shutil
import os

source = r"C:\Users\[username]\Downloads\"
dest1 = r" C:\Users\[username]\Desktop\Reports\14"
dest2 = r" C:\Users\[username]\Desktop\Reports\52"
dest3 = r" C:\Users\[username]\Desktop\Reports\59"

files = os.listdir(source)

for f in files:
   
 if (f.startswith("Log 14")):
        shutil.move(f, dest1)
    elif (f.startswith("Log 54")):
        shutil.move(f, dest2)

Answer 1

You had smart quotes instead of normal ones. Indenting is also not correct.

Here is the fixed code:

import shutil
import os

source = "C:\\Users\\[username]\\Downloads\\"
dest1 = "C:\\Users\\[username]\\Desktop\\Reports\\14"
dest2 = "C:\\Users\\[username]\\Desktop\\Reports\\52"
dest3 = "C:\\Users\\[username]\\Desktop\\Reports\\59"

files = os.listdir(source)

for f in files:
    if f.startswith("Log 14"):
        shutil.move(source + f, dest1)
    elif f.startswith("Log 54"):
        shutil.move(source + f, dest2)

Answer 2

Watch out for smart quotes ”. They need to be double quotes ".

Answer 3

import os

if os.name == 'nt':    #check if windows 
  a='\\'
else:
  a='/'


source = "C:"+a+"Users"+a+"[username]"+a+"Downloads"+a

Answer 4

Smart Quotation Marks strike again.

Using BabelStone, one can determine the unicode identification of each character in your code.

The start/ending quotes you're used to are \U0022. However, the end of the URL on dest2 ends with a different character, which is \U201D. This is a different character. Easiest way to fix this is to retype out the quotation marks in your IDE.

Input: "”

U+0022 : QUOTATION MARK {double quote}
U+201D : RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK {double comma quotation mark}