New submission from Derek Wilson:
Escaping strings for serialization or display is a common problem. Currently,
in python3, in order to escape a sting, you need to do this:
'my\tstring'.encode('unicode_escape').decode('ascii')
This would give you a string that was represented like this:
'my\\tstring'
But this does not present a suitable representation when the string contains
unicode characters. Consider this example:
s = 'Α\tΩ'
There is no method to write this string this with only the control character
escaped.
Even python itself recognizes this as a problem and implemented a "solution"
for it.
>>> s = 'Α\tΩ'
>>> print(s)
Α Ω
>>> print(repr(s))
'Α\tΩ'
>>> print(s.encode('unicode_escape').decode('ascii'))
\u0391\t\u03a9
What I want is public exposure of the functionality to represent control
characters with their common \ escape sequences (or \x## for control characters
where necessary - for instance unit and record separators).
I have numerous use cases for this and python's own str.__repr__ implementation
shows that the functionality is valuable. I would bet that the majority of
cases where people use unicode_escape something like a control_escape is more
along the lines of what is desired.
And while we're at it, it would be great if this were a unicode->unicode codec
like the rot_13 codec. My desired soluiton would look like this:
>>> import codecs
>>> s = 'Α\tΩ'
>>> e = codecs.encode(s, 'control_escape'))
>>> print(e)
Α\tΩ
>>> print(codecs.decode(e, 'control_escape'))
Α Ω
If this is something that could be included in python 3.4, that would be
awesome. I am willing to work on this if so.
----------
components: Library (Lib)
messages: 194625
nosy: underrun
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: include a codec to handle escaping only control characters but not any
others
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.4
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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue18679>
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