In Python, is it possible to escape newline characters when printing a string?

Question:

I want the newline n to show up explicitly when printing a string retrieved from elsewhere. So if the string is ‘abcndef’ I don’t want this to happen:

>>> print(line)
abc
def

but instead this:

>>> print(line)
abcndef

Is there a way to modify print, or modify the argument, or maybe another function entirely, to accomplish this?

Asked By: Tyler

||

Answers:

Just encode it with the 'string_escape' codec.

>>> print "foonbar".encode('string_escape')
foonbar

In python3, 'string_escape' has become unicode_escape. Additionally, we need to be a little more careful about bytes/unicode so it involves a decoding after the encoding:

>>> print("foonbar".encode("unicode_escape").decode("utf-8"))

unicode_escape reference

Answered By: mgilson

Another way that you can stop python using escape characters is to use a raw string like this:

>>> print(r"abcndef")
abcndef

or

>>> string = "abcndef"
>>> print (repr(string))
>>> 'abcndef'

the only proplem with using repr() is that it puts your string in single quotes, it can be handy if you want to use a quote

Answered By: PurityLake

Simplest method:
str_object.replace("n", "\n")

The other methods are better if you want to show all escape characters, but if all you care about is newlines, just use a direct replace.

Answered By: ACEfanatic02
Categories: questions Tags: , ,
Answers are sorted by their score. The answer accepted by the question owner as the best is marked with
at the top-right corner.