easy way to convert windows paths with variables into python string

Question

i tend to copy a lot of paths from a windows file explorer address bar, and they can get pretty long:

C:\Users\avnav\Documents\Desktop\SITES\SERVERS\4. server1\0_SERVER_MAKER

now let's say i want to replace avnav with getpass.getuser().

if i try something like:

project_file = f'C:\Users\{getpass.getuser()}\Documents\Desktop\SITES\SERVERS\4. server1\0_SERVER_MAKER'

i will get the following error:

SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

i presume it's because of the single back slash - although would be cool to pinpoint exactly what part causes the error, because i'm not sure.

in any case, i can also do something like:

project_file = r'C:\Users\!!\Documents\Desktop\SITES\SERVERS\4. server1\0_SERVER_MAKER'.replace('!!', getpass.getuser())

but this becomes annoying once i have more variables.

so is there a solution to this? or do i have to find and replace slashes or something?

Answer 1

Error

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SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

Read carefully. Yes, the error is that. There's a U char after a \.

This, in Python, is the way to insert in a string a Unicode character. So the interpreter expects hex digits to be after \U, but there's none so there's an exception raised.

Replace

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so is there a solution to this? or do i have to find and replace slashes or something?

That is a possible solution, after replacing all \ with / everything should be fine, but that's not the best solution.

Raw string

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Have you ever heard of characters escaping? In this case \ is escaping {.

In order to prevent this, just put the path as a raw-string.

rf'C:\Users\{getpass.getuser()}\Documents\Desktop\SITES\SERVERS\4. server1\0_SERVER_MAKER'