Ascii Encoding Error with UTF-8 encoder

[Serge Orlov]

On 6/27/06, Mike Currie <dev at null.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the thorough explanation.
>
> What I am doing is converting data for processing that will be tab (for
> columns) and newline (for row) delimited.   Some of the data contains tabs
> and newlines so, I have to convert them to something else so the file
> integrity is good.

Usually it is done by escaping: translate tab -> \t, new line -> \n,
back slash -> \\.
Python strings already have a method to do it in just one line:
>>> s=chr(9)+chr(10)+chr(92)
>>> print s.encode("string_escape")
\t\n\\

when you're ready to convert it back you call decode("string_escape")


> Not my idea, I've been left with the implementation however.

The idea is actually not bad as long as you know how to cope with unicode.