how to remove backslash from string in python

Question

if I use replace function then also I get an error.

filename = input("copy the file path with it's name and extension and paste it here to Encrypt: ")

filename_replace = filename.replace('\ ', " ")

ERROR says:

Anomalous backslash in string: '\ '. String constant might be missing an r prefix.

Is that an error running the code, or just the editor suggesting you might want to fix it? — Peter Wood, Dec 16 '20 at 14:36

Joe DF · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-16T14:36:51.893

You need to escape the backslash as \\.

filename = input("copy the file path with it's name and extension and paste it here to Encrypt: ")
# say it's something like "c:\myfiles\test.txt"
filename_replace = filename.replace("\\"," ")
# becomes "c: myfiles test.txt"

You can read more about escape characters and string literals here: https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#string-and-bytes-literals

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 16 '20 at 14:31

1

Try filename.replace('\\', " ").

answered Dec 16 '20 at 14:31

Nam V. Do

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Please add some explanation to your answer such that others can learn from it – Nico Haase Dec 16 '20 at 15:35

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 16 '20 at 14:32

In a python string, backslash is an escape character. This means it is not treated as a backslash, it has special functions (i.e. '\n' is a newline, and 'what\'s your name' == "what's your name"). You can either use two backslashes (to get one, four for two, etc) or put an r before the string (this ignores all backslashes)

r'\ ' == '\\ '

how to remove backslash from string in python

3 Answers3