Why does print "\\" only print out a single backslash?

Question

Consider the following Python 2.7 code:

 print "\\"

Expected result: \\

Actual result: \

Why does Python only print out a single backslash?

Answer 1

It's because \ is the escape character, it escape sequences like newlines and carriage returns. To print out two you can do:

print "\\\\"

Or:

print r"\\"

r prefix tells to ignore escape characters.