How do I write a "tab" in Python?
The Python reference manual includes several string literals that can be used in a string. These special sequences of characters are replaced by the intended meaning of the escape sequence.
Here is a table of some of the more useful escape sequences and a description of the output from them.
Escape Sequence Meaning
\t Tab
\\ Inserts a back slash (\)
\' Inserts a single quote (')
\" Inserts a double quote (")
\n Inserts a ASCII Linefeed (a new line)
Basic Example
If i wanted to print some data points separated by a tab space I could print this string.
DataString = "0\t12\t24"
print (DataString)
Returns
0 12 24
Example for Lists
Here is another example where we are printing the items of list and we want to sperate the items by a TAB.
DataPoints = [0,12,24]
print (str(DataPoints[0]) + "\t" + str(DataPoints[1]) + "\t" + str(DataPoints[2]))
Returns
0 12 24
Raw Strings
Note that raw strings (a string which include a prefix "r"), string literals will be ignored. This allows these special sequences of characters to be included in strings without being changed.
DataString = r"0\t12\t24"
print (DataString)
Returns
0\t12\t24
Which maybe an undesired output
String Lengths
It should also be noted that string literals are only one character in length.
DataString = "0\t12\t24"
print (len(DataString))
Returns
7
The raw string has a length of 9.
This is the code:
f = open(filename, 'w')
f.write("hello\talex")
The \t
inside the string is the escape sequence for the horizontal tabulation.