In Python, is it possible to escape newline characters when printing a string?

Question

I want the newline \n to show up explicitly when printing a string retrieved from elsewhere. So if the string is 'abc\ndef' I don't want this to happen:

>>> print(line) abc def 

but instead this:

>>> print(line) abc\ndef 

Is there a way to modify print, or modify the argument, or maybe another function entirely, to accomplish this?

Answer 1

Just encode it with the 'string_escape' codec.

>>> print "foo\nbar".encode('string_escape') foo\nbar 

In python3, 'string_escape' has become unicode_escape. Additionally, we need to be a little more careful about bytes/unicode so it involves a decoding after the encoding:

>>> print("foo\nbar".encode("unicode_escape").decode("utf-8")) 

unicode_escape reference

Answer 2

Another way that you can stop python using escape characters is to use a raw string like this:

>>> print(r"abc\ndef") abc\ndef 

or

>>> string = "abc\ndef" >>> print (repr(string)) >>> 'abc\ndef' 

the only proplem with using repr() is that it puts your string in single quotes, it can be handy if you want to use a quote