Interpreting \ escape sequences in strings

[Peter Otten]

Paul Watson wrote:

> However, I am in a Python 2.1 environment.  Do you know of any techniques
> that would work under Python 2.1?

eval('"' + s + '"')

This of course requires that " chars occuring in s are preceded by a
backslash:

>>> def unescape(s):
...     return eval('"' + s + '"')
...
>>> unescape("\\x0a")
'\n'
>>> unescape("\\x0a'")
"\n'"
>>> unescape("\\x0a\"") 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in unescape
  File "<string>", line 1
    "\x0a""
         ^
SyntaxError: invalid token
>>> unescape('\\x0a\\"')
'\n"'

Peter