raw_input can't handle pound sign?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:20:16 -0800, Jugdish wrote:

> Hi, I'm having problems getting a pound sign to go through as input sent
> to the raw_input() command. I'm running Python 2.5.1 on Windows XP.
> Here's my simple little script:
> 
> while True:
>     response = raw_input("Please enter a file name: ") if
>     os.path.exists(response):
>         break
> 
> Problem is if the filename has a "#" in it, the script interprets that
> as the beginning of a comment (not sure why -- isn't raw_input supposed
> to treat the user's input as raw text and not do any sort of evals?)

Yes it is. What makes you think it is being interpreted as a comment? 
What results are you getting?

 
> Any ideas how to get a # to go through? Thanks!

Works for me (although I'm not using Windows XP).

Can you execute this line at the interactive interpreter? 

print raw_input("Type something with a hash sign: ")


At the prompt, type "test # string" (without the quotes) and show us what 
result you get. When I do this, I get the following:


>>> print raw_input("Type something with a hash sign: ")
Type something with a hash sign: test # string
test # string



-- 
Steven