How to un-escape a backslash-escaped string?
All given answers will break on general Unicode strings. The following works for Python3 in all cases, as far as I can tell:
from codecs import encode, decode
sample = u'mon€y\\nröcks'
result = decode(encode(sample, 'latin-1', 'backslashreplace'), 'unicode-escape')
print(result)
In recent Python versions, this also works without the import:
sample = u'mon€y\\nröcks'
result = sample.encode('latin-1', 'backslashreplace').decode('unicode-escape')
As outlined in the comments, you can also use the literal_eval
method from the ast
module like so:
import ast
sample = u'mon€y\\nröcks'
print(ast.literal_eval(F'"{sample}"'))
Or like this when your string really contains a string literal (including the quotes):
import ast
sample = u'"mon€y\\nröcks"'
print(ast.literal_eval(sample))
However, if you are uncertain whether the input string uses double or single quotes as delimiters, or when you cannot assume it to be properly escaped at all, then literal_eval
may raise a SyntaxError
while the encode/decode method will still work.
>>> print '"Hello,\\nworld!"'.decode('string_escape')
"Hello,
world!"
You can use ast.literal_eval
which is safe:
Safely evaluate an expression node or a string containing a Python expression. The string or node provided may only consist of the following Python literal structures: strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, and None. (END)
Like this:
>>> import ast
>>> escaped_str = '"Hello,\\nworld!"'
>>> print ast.literal_eval(escaped_str)
Hello,
world!