the slash & Windows paths

[Dave Angel]

On 12/19/2011 05:02 PM, Juan Declet-Barreto wrote:
> All,
>
> I have a Windows-style path that I need to modify so Python functions can find it. For example, the path "C:\Projects\Population_Pyramids\charts\test.xls" is being interpreted as pointing to a file called "est.xls" since the "t" is being escaped by the preceding slash as a tab.
>
> I know this is straightforward to handle using raw literals by prefixing the literal with an 'r', but my path is stored in a variable.
>
> My questions are: 1. How do I prevent single slashes from being escaped in a string variable (NOT literal)?
>                                        2. Is it possible to do a string.replace to substitute all instances of '\' for '\\'? I tried this but it did not give me the desired result.
>
So far you haven't told us how you got this weird pattern into your 
variable.  For example, if it was typed in by the user, in the form:

     mypath = raw_input("what's yourpath?")

then the question is nonsensical.  There's no escaping needed, as it has 
never been a literal string.

if it came from a text file, there's no escaping needed.

So give us a real scenario, and we'll probably be able to figure out 
where you're going wrong.



-- 

DaveA