ConfigParser: use newline in INI file

[tony]

On 07/03/2019 16:58, jim.womeldorf at gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, March 7, 2019 at 8:55:31 AM UTC-6, tony wrote:
>> On 07/03/2019 14:16, jim.womeldorf at gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 7:41:40 PM UTC-5, Ned Batchelder wrote:
>>>> On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 6:25:16 PM UTC-4, Thorsten Kampe wrote:
>>>>> * Ben Finney (Sun, 02 Oct 2016 07:12:46 +1100)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thorsten Kampe <thorsten at thorstenkampe.de> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ConfigParser escapes `\n` in ini values as `\\n`.
>>>>>
>>>>> Indenting solves the problem. I'd rather keep it one line per value 
>>>>> but it solves the problem.
>>>>
>>>> If you want to have \n mean a newline in your config file, you can 
>>>> do the conversion after you read the value:
>>>>
>>>>     >>> "a\\nb".decode("string-escape")
>>>>     'a\nb'
>>>>
>>>> --Ned.
>>>
>>> Wow!  Thanks so much Ned.  I've been looking for the solution to this issue for several days and had nearly given up.
>>> Jim
>>>
>> How does that translate to Python3?
> 
> I have no idea.  I'm on 2.7.3  
> I'd be interested in knowing if someone would try it on 3.
> I do very little Python programming.  I've written a messaging system for Linuxcnc and could not get it to work using bash, so I tried Python and now, thanks to you, I have it working.
> I can provide you with the code if you want to play with it.  When it is run with an integer as a parameter it displays a message from an INI file.
> Jim
> 

Python 3.5.3 (default, Sep 27 2018, 17:25:39)
[GCC 6.3.0 20170516] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
>>> "a\\nb".decode("string-escape")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode'
>>>