Convert regular Python string to raw string

Question

I have a string s, its contents are variable. How can I make it a raw string? I'm looking for something similar to the r'' method.

Answer 1

i believe what you're looking for is the str.encode("string-escape") function. For example, if you have a variable that you want to 'raw string':

a = '\x89'
a.encode('unicode_escape')
'\\x89'

Note: Use string-escape for python 2.x and older versions

I was searching for a similar solution and found the solution via: casting raw strings python

Answer 2

Raw strings are not a different kind of string. They are a different way of describing a string in your source code. Once the string is created, it is what it is.

Answer 3

Since strings in Python are immutable, you cannot "make it" anything different. You can however, create a new raw string from s, like this:

raw_s = r'{}'.format(s)

Answer 4

As of Python 3.6, you can use the following (similar to @slashCoder):

def to_raw(string):
    return fr"{string}"

my_dir ="C:\data\projects"
to_raw(my_dir)

yields 'C:\\data\\projects'. I'm using it on a Windows 10 machine to pass directories to functions.

Answer 5

raw strings apply only to string literals. they exist so that you can more conveniently express strings that would be modified by escape sequence processing. This is most especially useful when writing out regular expressions, or other forms of code in string literals. if you want a unicode string without escape processing, just prefix it with ur, like ur'somestring'.

Answer 6

For Python 3, the way to do this that doesn't add double backslashes and simply preserves \n, \t, etc. is:

a = 'hello\nbobby\nsally\n'
a.encode('unicode-escape').decode().replace('\\\\', '\\')
print(a)

Which gives a value that can be written as CSV:

hello\nbobby\nsally\n

There doesn't seem to be a solution for other special characters, however, that may get a single \ before them. It's a bummer. Solving that would be complex.

For example, to serialize a pandas.Series containing a list of strings with special characters in to a textfile in the format BERT expects with a CR between each sentence and a blank line between each document:

with open('sentences.csv', 'w') as f:

    current_idx = 0
    for idx, doc in sentences.items():
        # Insert a newline to separate documents
        if idx != current_idx:
            f.write('\n')
        # Write each sentence exactly as it appared to one line each
        for sentence in doc:
            f.write(sentence.encode('unicode-escape').decode().replace('\\\\', '\\') + '\n')

This outputs (for the Github CodeSearchNet docstrings for all languages tokenized into sentences):

Makes sure the fast-path emits in order.
@param value the value to emit or queue up\n@param delayError if true, errors are delayed until the source has terminated\n@param disposable the resource to dispose if the drain terminates

Mirrors the one ObservableSource in an Iterable of several ObservableSources that first either emits an item or sends\na termination notification.
Scheduler:\n{@code amb} does not operate by default on a particular {@link Scheduler}.
@param  the common element type\n@param sources\nan Iterable of ObservableSource sources competing to react first.
A subscription to each source will\noccur in the same order as in the Iterable.
@return an Observable that emits the same sequence as whichever of the source ObservableSources first\nemitted an item or sent a termination notification\n@see ReactiveX operators documentation: Amb


...

Answer 7

Just format like that:

s = "your string"; raw_s = r'{0}'.format(s)

Answer 8

s = "hel\nlo"
raws = '%r'%s #coversion to raw string
#print(raws) will print 'hel\nlo' with single quotes.
print(raws[1:-1]) # will print hel\nlo without single quotes.
#raws[1:-1] string slicing is performed

Answer 9

The solution, which worked for me was:

fr"{orignal_string}"

Suggested in comments by @ChemEnger

Answer 10

I suppose repr function can help you:

s = 't\n'
repr(s)
"'t\\n'"
repr(s)[1:-1]
't\\n'

Answer 11

With a little bit correcting @Jolly1234's Answer: here is the code:

raw_string=path.encode('unicode_escape').decode()

Answer 12

Just simply use the encode function.

my_var = 'hello'
my_var_bytes = my_var.encode()
print(my_var_bytes)

And then to convert it back to a regular string do this

my_var_bytes = 'hello'
my_var = my_var_bytes.decode()
print(my_var)

---

--EDIT--

The following does not make the string raw but instead encodes it to bytes and decodes it.