Simple question but I'm struggling with it for too much time. Basically I want to split a string by \ (backslash).
a = "1\2\3\4"
Tried to escape the the backslash but it doesn't seem to work:
print(a.split('\'))
print(a.split('"\"'))
print(a.split('\\'))
print(a.split('"\\"'))
I want to get this result:
['1','2','3','4']
Many thanks in advance
You have the right idea with escaping the backslashes, but despite how it looks, your input string doesn't actually have any backslashes in it. You need to escape them in the input, too!
>>> a = "1\\2\\3\\4" # Note the doubled backslashes here!
>>> print(a.split('\\')) # Split on '\\'
['1', '2', '3', '4']
You could also use a raw string literal for the input, if it's likely to have many backslashes. This notation is much cleaner to look at (IMO), but it does have some limitations: read the docs!
>>> a = r"1\2\3\4"
>>> print(a.split('\\'))
['1', '2', '3', '4']
If you're getting a elsewhere, and a.split('\\') doesn't appropriately split on the visible backslashes, that means you've got something else in there instead of real backslashes. Try print(repr(a)) to see what the "literal" string actually looks like.
>>> a = '1\2\3\4'
>>> print(a)
1☻♥♦
>>> print(repr(a))
'1\x02\x03\x04'
>>> b = '1\\2\\3\\4'
>>> print(b)
1\2\3\4
>>> print(repr(b))
'1\\2\\3\\4'
print(a) results in 1\2\3\4, then you do indeed have backslashes, and splitting on '\\' will split on them. If it's not, that means you've got some other character in there: try print(repr(a)) to see a literal representation of a, escape characters and all.
You can split a string by backslash using a.split('\\').
The reason this is not working in your case is that \x in your assignment a = "1\2\3\4" is interpreted as an octal number. If you prefix the string with r, you will get the intended result.
According to this answer:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/2081708/3893465
you'll need to escape the backslashes before splitting as such:
>>> a = "1\2\3\4"
>>> a.encode('string-escape').split("\\x")
['1', '02', '03', '04']
'\r' does the trick for me
var = 'a\b\c\d'
var.split('\r')
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
Covering all the special cases like \a,\b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v (String Literals)
def split_str(str):
ref_dict = {
'\x07':'a',
'\x08':'b',
'\x0C':'f',
'\n':'n',
'\r':'r',
'\t':'t',
'\x0b':'v',
}
res_arr = []
temp = ''
for i in str :
if not i == '\\':
if i in ref_dict:
if not temp == "":
res_arr.append(temp)
res_arr.append(ref_dict[i])
temp = ''
else:
temp += i
else:
if not temp == '':
res_arr.append(temp)
temp = ''
res_arr.append(temp)
return res_arr
str = "a\a\b\f\n\r\t\v\c\d\e\f\i"
print(split_str(str))
You could just replace the backslashes with a pipe (|) and go on with your program.
All text editors have a replace character option, where you could replace every occurence of \ with "|".
This is my text file containing words separated by backslashes
Below is our desired output (formatted file) !
Here is the list of strings that you can now use in your program !
The same method can be used on Windows, Linux, ect. as well !
a = "1\2\3\4"), that rather than yoursplitcall is the problem. Escape the \ in your string declaration or user"".