Escaping certain characters

[Robert Kern]

Jan Danielsson wrote:
> Robert Kern wrote:
> [---]
> 
>>>   I need to escape '\n', '"', '[' and ']'. I finally went with a few of
>>>these:
>>>string.replace('\n', '\\n')
>>>string.replace('"', '\\"')
>>>...
>>>
>>>   I assume that's good enough, but I somehow expected there to exist
>>>some form of "insert your conversion table here" built-in string escaper.
>>
>>Write a codec.
> 
>    Is that what string.encode() uses? Some behind-the-scenes "codec"? I
> tried searching for it, but could only find UTF/Unicode-related
> information. Is it in the normal python documentation?
> 
>    Semi-Offtopic: The "search" facility in the Python help has stopped
> functioning for me (I'm using XP on this system). No matter what I
> search for, I get no results. A week ago, I got a lot of hits for almost
> anything I searched for. Anyone seen this behavior, and knows what to do
> about it?

Use Google:

site:docs.python.org codecs

-- 
Robert Kern
rkern at ucsd.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
  Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
   -- Richard Harter