Escaping certain characters

[Robert Kern]

Jan Danielsson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'd like to encode the string that outputs:
> 
> Hello
> World!
> 
> to 'Hello\x0aWorld!', and the string that outputs:
> 
> Hello\World!
> 
> to 'Hello\\World!'.
> 
> Obviously, I want to be able to reverse the process.
> 
> I'm going to assume this has already been solved in Python.. But how?

In [1]: s = 'Hello\x0aWorld!'

In [2]: print s
Hello
World!

In [3]: s.encode('string_escape')
Out[3]: 'Hello\\nWorld!'

In [4]: Out[3].decode('string_escape')
Out[4]: 'Hello\nWorld!'

Not *quite* what you asked for, but it ought to be close enough.

-- 
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