Special Characters in string literals
Question:
I am making a set in Python to house all the symbols on my keyboard, but obviously a few pose some issues. Is there a way to get them all in there without encountering problems?
Here is my set:
symbols = {`,~,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,),_,-,+,=,{,[,},},|,,:,;,",',<,,,>,.,?,/}
To get around commenting out most of it, since in Python # is to comment, I enclosed everything like so:
symbols = {'`','~','!','@','#','$','%','^','&','*','(',')','_','-','+','=','{','[','}','}','|','',':',';','"',''','<',',','>','.','?','/'}
Which works for that character, but now I can already see an issue when I come across the ' and
Answers:
You can fix the backslash by escaping it and ' can be fixed by putting it in double quotes:
symbols = {..., '\', ... "'", ...}
But typing all this out is pretty tedious. Why not just use string.punctuation instead:
>>> from string import punctuation
>>> set(punctuation)
{'~', ':', "'", '+', '[', '\', '@', '^', '{', '%', '(', '-', '"', '*', '|', ',', '&', '<', '`', '}', '.', '_', '=', ']', '!', '>', ';', '?', '#', '$', ')', '/'}
>>>
I would rather put them all in triple quotes, like this. It would ignore any special characters:
`''' `,~,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,),_,-,+,=,{,[,},},|,,:,;,",',<,,,>,.,?,/'''`
user2555451’s answer is spot on, but just as an observation on how to get these into Python efficiently – the first part of your question – try this:
symbols = set(r"""`~!@#$%^&*()_-+={[}}|:;"'<,>.?/""")
That:
- Wraps the string in three quotes to simplify handling the single or double quote issue
- Puts an
r in front of the string to handle the escape character
set converts the string to a set
The initial string was missing the close square bracket, just as an aside. Using a simple set operator:
>>> symbols - set(string.punctuation)
{']'}
Just use a "\" which outputs "" in the python terminal, if you try to use "" then python will throw you an error so, instead of "" use "\" which will print the same value that is: "".
I am making a set in Python to house all the symbols on my keyboard, but obviously a few pose some issues. Is there a way to get them all in there without encountering problems?
Here is my set:
symbols = {`,~,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,),_,-,+,=,{,[,},},|,,:,;,",',<,,,>,.,?,/}
To get around commenting out most of it, since in Python # is to comment, I enclosed everything like so:
symbols = {'`','~','!','@','#','$','%','^','&','*','(',')','_','-','+','=','{','[','}','}','|','',':',';','"',''','<',',','>','.','?','/'}
Which works for that character, but now I can already see an issue when I come across the ' and . Is there a better way to make this set?
You can fix the backslash by escaping it and ' can be fixed by putting it in double quotes:
symbols = {..., '\', ... "'", ...}
But typing all this out is pretty tedious. Why not just use string.punctuation instead:
>>> from string import punctuation
>>> set(punctuation)
{'~', ':', "'", '+', '[', '\', '@', '^', '{', '%', '(', '-', '"', '*', '|', ',', '&', '<', '`', '}', '.', '_', '=', ']', '!', '>', ';', '?', '#', '$', ')', '/'}
>>>
I would rather put them all in triple quotes, like this. It would ignore any special characters:
`''' `,~,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,),_,-,+,=,{,[,},},|,,:,;,",',<,,,>,.,?,/'''`
user2555451’s answer is spot on, but just as an observation on how to get these into Python efficiently – the first part of your question – try this:
symbols = set(r"""`~!@#$%^&*()_-+={[}}|:;"'<,>.?/""")
That:
- Wraps the string in three quotes to simplify handling the single or double quote issue
- Puts an
rin front of the string to handle the escape character setconverts the string to a set
The initial string was missing the close square bracket, just as an aside. Using a simple set operator:
>>> symbols - set(string.punctuation)
{']'}
Just use a "\" which outputs "" in the python terminal, if you try to use "" then python will throw you an error so, instead of "" use "\" which will print the same value that is: "".