SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 9 May 2015 06:39 am, zljubisicmob at gmail.com wrote:

> Thanks for clarifying.
> Looks like the error message was wrong.

No, the error message was right.

Your problem was that you used backslashes in *Python program code*, rather
than reading it from a text file.

In Python, a string-literal containing \U is an escape sequence which
expects exactly 8 hexadecimal digits to follow:


py> path = '~~~~\U000000a7~~~~'
py> print(path)
~~~~§~~~~

If you don't follow the \U with eight hex digits, you get an error:

py> path = '~~~~\Users~~~~'
  File "<stdin>", line 1
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in
position 4-6: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape


This applies only to string literals in code. For data read from files,
backslash \ is just an ordinary character which has no special meaning.


> On windows ntfs I had a file name more than 259 characters which is widows
> limit. After cutting file name to 259 characters everything works as it
> should. If I cut file name to 260 characters I get the error from subject
> which is wrong.

What you describe is impossible. You cannot possibly get a SyntaxError at
compile time because the path is too long. You must have made other changes
at the same time, such as using a raw string r'C: ... \Users\ ...'.



-- 
Steven