String with Backslash and Quotes in Python is problems galore

Question

I've a normal string, that I like to send to a program, which only eats my string as "\"text\"", exactly like that. But in Python I can print it like that but I can't assign it like that. See the following:

My text:

In [12]:

i = fieldList[0]
print str(i.name)
Y03M01D01

Which I can print as "\"text\""

In [13]:

field_new = '"\\"'+str(i.name)+'\\""'
print field_new
"\"Y03M01D01\""

But this is how it is eaten by the program

In [14]:

field_new
Out[14]:
'"\\"Y03M01D01\\""'

Which is not equal to "\"text\"" and so my code fails. Any suggestions how to resolve this?

Answer 1

Using the r prefix for the string in your comparison will have python treat the string as raw (all backslashes are unescaped).

>>> i = "text"
>>> field_new = '"\\"'+str(i)+'\\""'
>>> field_new
'"\\"text\\""'
>>> field_new == r'"\"text\""'
True