take newline character as input

Question

I've a small script to find and replace strings since most text editors fail to do so for multiple files. When I pass newline character(\n) as input, the python converts the slash to double slash and it no more stays are newline character. So, my search and replace fails.

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Adding suggested solutions here:

Solution 1.

As suggested by @Xu Qiushi

from shlex import quote as q

from ast import literal_eval as le

a = le(q(input()))

allows to take \n as it is.

Solution 2:

Directly providing a dictionary as dict_a = {'।\s' : '।\n'}

etc. works fine for search.

Does this answer your question? [How to get multiline input from user](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30239092/how-to-get-multiline-input-from-user) — Green Cloak Guy, Jul 02 '20 at 04:19
Actually, I'm not taking multiline strings. I'm just trying to take inputs for regex search. — lalitaalaalitah, Jul 02 '20 at 04:23
One way may be to input \n and let it be converted to \\n by python and then replace every \\ with \. Does that look good.? — lalitaalaalitah, Jul 02 '20 at 04:24
Is it possible that I'm being fooled by output like this post says: https://stackoverflow.com/a/301075/10866036 — lalitaalaalitah, Jul 02 '20 at 04:27
Does this answered your question? "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54410812/how-do-you-input-escape-sequences-in-python" — Xu Qiushi, Jul 02 '20 at 04:31
[Please do not upload images of code/data/errors when asking a question.](//meta.stackoverflow.com/q/285551) — Karl Knechtel, Aug 07 '22 at 06:13

Maghil vannan · Answer 1 · 2020-07-02T04:51:44.763

0

Workaround solution :

a= input()
if (a == "\\n"):
  a="\n"
b = """hello
lad"""
print(a in b)

I wouldn't recommend user entering special character

Solution 2:

`a=input()
 if(a == "new"):
   a="\n"`

edited Jul 02 '20 at 04:51

answered Jul 02 '20 at 04:43

Maghil vannan

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Yes, it appears that there is no way apart from replacing \\n with \n. – lalitaalaalitah Jul 02 '20 at 04:48
Now, just consider that if I've to do it for \s \t and whatever not, it'll be more troublesome. Trying to use string_a.replace('\\', '\') doesn't work and using string_a.replace('\\', '"\\"') gives undesired result. Any suggestions here. – lalitaalaalitah Jul 02 '20 at 04:50
Python converts it since it's a bad idea letting users enter special character may break the program – Maghil vannan Jul 02 '20 at 04:52
So, it appears that instead of using \n, I've to enter literal as suggested by @Xu Qiushi. But, I wonder whether the regex search will work then? – lalitaalaalitah Jul 02 '20 at 05:00
You could use a =ast.literal_eval(shlex.quote(a)) – Maghil vannan Jul 02 '20 at 05:06
1

yes, this is enough for now. BTW, if there were no solutions for this, then providing {search_string : replacement_string} library was the only way. – lalitaalaalitah Jul 02 '20 at 05:12

take newline character as input

1 Answers1