Python string escape vs unicode escape

Question

According to the docs  the builtin string encoding string escape      Produce s  a string that is suitable as string literal in Python source code      while the unicode escape      Produce s  a string that is suitable as Unicode literal in Python source code   So  they should have roughly the same behaviour  BUT  they appear to treat single quotes differently    gt  gt  gt  print    before     0 after    encode  string-escape   before      x00 after  gt  gt  gt  print    before     0 after    encode  unicode-escape   before     x00 after   The string escape escapes the single quote while the Unicode one does not  Is it safe to assume that I can simply    gt  gt  gt  escaped   my string encode  unicode-escape   replace                  and get the expected behaviour   Edit  Just to be super clear  the expected behavior is getting something suitable as a literal

User · Accepted Answer

According to my interpretation of the implementation of unicode-escape and the unicode repr in the CPython 2.6.5 source, yes; the only difference between repr(unicode_string) and unicode_string.encode('unicode-escape') is the inclusion of wrapping quotes and escaping whichever quote was used.

They are both driven by the same function, unicodeescape_string. This function takes a parameter whose sole function is to toggle the addition of the wrapping quotes and escaping of that quote.

User · Answer

Within the range 0   c  lt  128  yes the   is the only difference for CPython 2 6    gt  gt  gt  set unichr c  encode  unicode escape   for c in range 128   - set chr c  encode  string escape   for c in range 128   set          Outside of this range the two types are not exchangeable    gt  gt  gt    x80  encode  string escape      x80   gt  gt  gt    x80  encode  unicode escape   Traceback  most recent call last     File   lt stdin gt    line 1  in  lt module gt  UnicodeDecodeError   ascii  codec can   t decode byte 0x80 in position 0  ordinal not in range 128    gt  gt  gt  u 1  encode  unicode escape    1   gt  gt  gt  u 1  encode  string escape   Traceback  most recent call last     File   lt stdin gt    line 1  in  lt module gt  TypeError  escape encode   argument 1 must be str  not unicode   On Python 3 x  the string escape encoding no longer exists  since str can only store Unicode

[python] Python "string_escape" vs "unicode_escape"

Examples related to python

Examples related to encoding

Examples related to quotes

Examples related to escaping