Split string by escape character

Question

I'm trying to split a string by the escape character in Python.

This is the way I've been trying to do it:

s = "C:\Users\as\Desktop\Data\pdf\txt\RTX_IDS_1DYS_20170610_0000_220279611-650000624200.txt"
s.encode("string_escape").split("\\")

When I run it, I get the following error:

s = "C:\Users\as\Desktop\Data\pdf\txt\RTX_IDS_1DYS_20170610_0000_220279611-650000624200.txt"
       ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

Answer 1

prefix your string with r - that will turn it into a raw string, telling python that \ is a literal \.

s = r"C:\Users\as\Desktop\Data\pdf\txt\RTX_IDS_1DYS_20170610_0000_220279611-650000624200.txt"
parts = s.split("\\")
print(parts)

Output:

['C:', 'Users', 'as', 'Desktop', 'Data', 'pdf', 'txt', 'RTX_IDS_1DYS_20170610_0000_220279611-650000624200.txt']

For more information on string prefixes see:

https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#string-and-bytes-literals