How to escape special characters of a string with single backslashes

Just assuming this is for a regular expression, use re.escape.

We could use built-in function repr() or string interpolation fr'{}' escape all backwardslashs \ in Python 3.7.*

repr('my_string') or fr'{my_string}'

Check the Link: https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#repr

This is one way to do it (in Python 3.x):

escaped = a_string.translate(str.maketrans({"-":  r"\-",
                                          "]":  r"\]",
                                          "\\": r"\\",
                                          "^":  r"\^",
                                          "$":  r"\$",
                                          "*":  r"\*",
                                          ".":  r"\."}))

For reference, for escaping strings to use in regex:

import re
escaped = re.escape(a_string)

re.escape doesn't double escape. It just looks like it does if you run in the repl. The second layer of escaping is caused by outputting to the screen.

When using the repl, try using print to see what is really in the string.

$ python
>>> import re
>>> re.escape("\^stack\.\*/overflo\\w\$arr=1")
'\\\\\\^stack\\\\\\.\\\\\\*\\/overflo\\\\w\\\\\\$arr\\=1'
>>> print re.escape("\^stack\.\*/overflo\\w\$arr=1")
\\\^stack\\\.\\\*\/overflo\\w\\\$arr\=1
>>>