Documentation on 3.6->3.7 re.escape no longer escaping "/" or ":" should be obvious

[rbanffy]

BPO	38294
Nosy	@ned-deily, @ezio-melotti, @serhiy-storchaka, @rbanffy, @miss-islington
PRs	bpo-38294: Add list of no-longer-escaped chars to re.escape documentation #16442 [3.8] bpo-38294: Add list of no-longer-escaped chars to re.escape documentation. (GH-16442) #16626 [3.7] bpo-38294: Add list of no-longer-escaped chars to re.escape doc… #16647

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2019-10-09.09:07:52.018>
created_at = <Date 2019-09-27.17:06:37.558>
labels = ['expert-regex', '3.7', '3.8', '3.9', 'type-feature', 'docs']
title = 'Documentation on 3.6->3.7 re.escape no longer escaping "/" or ":" should be obvious'
updated_at = <Date 2019-10-15.07:30:25.763>
user = 'https://github.com/rbanffy'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2019-10-15.07:30:25.763>
actor = 'ned.deily'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2019-10-09.09:07:52.018>
closer = 'serhiy.storchaka'
components = ['Documentation', 'Regular Expressions']
creation = <Date 2019-09-27.17:06:37.558>
creator = 'rbanffy'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 38294
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 10.0
messages = ['353380', '353384', '353389', '353390', '353392', '354141', '354143', '354221', '354258', '354698']
nosy_count = 7.0
nosy_names = ['ned.deily', 'ezio.melotti', 'mrabarnett', 'docs@python', 'serhiy.storchaka', 'rbanffy', 'miss-islington']
pr_nums = ['16442', '16626', '16647']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue38294'
versions = ['Python 3.7', 'Python 3.8', 'Python 3.9']

[rbanffy]

Under Python 3.6, re.escape escapes "/"

In [1]: import re

In [2]: re.escape('http://workday.com')
Out[2]: 'http\\:\\/\\/workday\\.com'

Under 3.7 and 3.8, "/" is not escaped.

In [1]: import re

In [2]: re.escape('http://workday.com')
Out[2]: 'http://workday\\\\.com'

Is this change deliberate? For a minor release (3.6 to 3.7) this broke some code that generated sed commands to run on a remote server.

[serhiy-storchaka]

Yes, it is deliberate. "/" and ":" do not have special meaning in regular expressions and do not need escaping. re.escape() now produces more human-readable result and works faster.

[rbanffy]

Thanks for the clarification, Serhiy. Should we update the 3.7 docs to warn others about it?

[serhiy-storchaka]

It is already documented. There are even examples which contain "/" and ":".

[rbanffy]

Indeed. It was easy to miss because of the joining and sorting. Being explicit on the 3.7 changes, that '!', '"', '%', "'", ',', '/', ':', ';', '<', '=', '>', '@', '`' were up to 3.6 but are no longer escaped since 3.7, would be nice.

[serhiy-storchaka]

New changeset 15ae75d by Serhiy Storchaka (Ricardo Bánffy) in branch 'master':
bpo-38294: Add list of no-longer-escaped chars to re.escape documentation. (GH-16442)
15ae75d

[miss-islington]

New changeset b731fc5 by Miss Islington (bot) in branch '3.8':
bpo-38294: Add list of no-longer-escaped chars to re.escape documentation. (GH-16442)
b731fc5

[serhiy-storchaka]

New changeset 43f5c0c by Serhiy Storchaka (Ricardo Bánffy) in branch '3.7':
[3.7] bpo-38294: Add list of no-longer-escaped chars to re.escape documentation. (GH-16442) (GH-16647)
43f5c0c

[serhiy-storchaka]

Thank you for your contribution Ricardo!

[ned-deily]

New changeset ae41f62 by Ned Deily (Ricardo Bánffy) in branch '3.7':
[3.7] bpo-38294: Add list of no-longer-escaped chars to re.escape documentation. (GH-16442) (GH-16647)
ae41f62