From de621281ce704546b87334fd7da7a7ec534719b7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Miss Islington (bot)" <31488909+miss-islington@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2022 21:45:45 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] gh-55688: Add note about ending backslashes for raw strings (GH-94768) (cherry picked from commit b95b1b3b25b0a93a22c7d58ac5bd5870e62070a8) Co-authored-by: Stanley <46876382+slateny@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: hauntsaninja --- Doc/faq/programming.rst | 40 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Doc/tutorial/introduction.rst | 5 +++++ 2 files changed, 45 insertions(+) diff --git a/Doc/faq/programming.rst b/Doc/faq/programming.rst index c396e2b081fca3..ba42289f3466c2 100644 --- a/Doc/faq/programming.rst +++ b/Doc/faq/programming.rst @@ -1026,6 +1026,46 @@ What does 'UnicodeDecodeError' or 'UnicodeEncodeError' error mean? See the :ref:`unicode-howto`. +.. _faq-programming-raw-string-backslash: + +Can I end a raw string with an odd number of backslashes? +--------------------------------------------------------- + +A raw string ending with an odd number of backslashes will escape the string's quote:: + + >>> r'C:\this\will\not\work\' + File "", line 1 + r'C:\this\will\not\work\' + ^ + SyntaxError: unterminated string literal (detected at line 1) + +There are several workarounds for this. One is to use regular strings and double +the backslashes:: + + >>> 'C:\\this\\will\\work\\' + 'C:\\this\\will\\work\\' + +Another is to concatenate a regular string containing an escaped backslash to the +raw string:: + + >>> r'C:\this\will\work' '\\' + 'C:\\this\\will\\work\\' + +It is also possible to use :func:`os.path.join` to append a backslash on Windows:: + + >>> os.path.join(r'C:\this\will\work', '') + 'C:\\this\\will\\work\\' + +Note that while a backslash will "escape" a quote for the purposes of +determining where the raw string ends, no escaping occurs when interpreting the +value of the raw string. That is, the backslash remains present in the value of +the raw string:: + + >>> r'backslash\'preserved' + "backslash\\'preserved" + +Also see the specification in the :ref:`language reference `. + Performance =========== diff --git a/Doc/tutorial/introduction.rst b/Doc/tutorial/introduction.rst index 558b1c3eec60ed..b7a89905e4f38c 100644 --- a/Doc/tutorial/introduction.rst +++ b/Doc/tutorial/introduction.rst @@ -189,6 +189,11 @@ the first quote:: >>> print(r'C:\some\name') # note the r before the quote C:\some\name +There is one subtle aspect to raw strings: a raw string may not end in +an odd number of ``\`` characters; see +:ref:`the FAQ entry ` for more information +and workarounds. + String literals can span multiple lines. One way is using triple-quotes: ``"""..."""`` or ``'''...'''``. End of lines are automatically included in the string, but it's possible to prevent this by adding a ``\`` at