On Mon, 07 Mar 2005 19:24:43 -0500, "Grant Olson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I have a data file that has lines like "foo\n\0" where the \n\0 is acutally
>backslash+n+backslash+0. I.E. a repr of the string from python would be
>"foo\\n\\0". I'm trying to convert this string into one that contains
>actual newlines and whatnot. I feel like there has to be a better and safer
>way to do this than eval("'%s'" % "foo\\n\\0") but I'm not finding it.
>
>Any tips would be appreciated,
>
>>> s = "foo\\n\\0"
>>> s
'foo\\n\\0'
>>> list(s)
['f', 'o', 'o', '\\', 'n', '\\', '0']
>>> sd = s.decode('string_escape')
>>> sd
'foo\n\x00'
>>> list(sd)
['f', 'o', 'o', '\n', '\x00']
You could make a de-escaping utility function, e.g.,
>>> def de_esc(s): return s.decode('string_escape')
...
>>> s
'foo\\n\\0'
>>> de_esc(s)
'foo\n\x00'
You might want to write a test to verify that it does what you
expect for the kind of escaped string you are using.
Regards,
Bengt Richter
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