On Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:50:01 -0700, Kyle Hayes wrote:
>> Please describe the actual problem you're trying to solve. In what way
>> do slashes need to be "fixed," and why?
>
> Well, I have decided to build a tool to help us sync files in UNC paths.
> I am just building the modules and classes right now so I haven't
> developed the frontend yet. I am assuming when the user provides a path
> (either by typing it in, or pulling it in from a config file), the UNC
> slashes are going to escape stuff in the string, so I want to double
> them up.
>
> I understand if the best way is to convert all the slashes to double-
> slashes. But the 'r' function seemed so handy and convenient.
You don't need to. Python's string is never escaped in-memory, it is only
escaped when repr(s) is called (the interpreter's implicit print uses repr
() instead of str()). And that means all string coming and going to/from
IO (file, GUI, etc) is stored as-is. However, strings that comes from
source code or interpreter prompt (a.k.a. literal string) needs to be
escaped.
Analogy: When you're writing a string in the source code, you add double
quotes (""), right? But do you think the quotes are stored in memory? No,
it's just an escape character to differentiate a string from its
surrounding.
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