why does using "\" shows error in jython

Question

I am trying to use a copy command for Windows and we have directories such as c:\oracle.

While trying to execute one such, we get the following error:

source_file=folder+"\"
                          ^
SyntaxError: Lexical error at line 17, column 23.  Encountered: "\r" (13), after : ""

Here folder is my path of c:\oracle and while trying to add file to it like:

source=folder+"\"+src_file

I am not able to do so. Any suggestion on how to solve this issue?

I tried with / but my copy windows calling source in os.command is getting "the syntax is incorrect" and the only way to solve it is to use \ but I am getting the above error in doing so.

Please suggest. Thanks for your help

Thanks.

Answer 1

Short answer:

You need:

source_file = folder + "\\" + src_file

---

Long answer:

The problem with

source_file = folder + "\" + src_file

is that \ is the escape character. What it's doing in this particular case is escaping the " so that it's treated as a character of the string rather than the string terminator, similar to:

source_file = folder + "X + src_file

which would have the same problem.

In other words, you're trying to construct a string consisting of ", some other text and the end of line (\r, the carriage return character). That's where your error is coming from:

Encountered: "\r" (13)