Re: backslashes and r-strings r"abc"

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Hahn <[email protected]> writes:
Mark> Both the Python warts list and the Gotchas list complain about
Mark> the confusion of the r"abc" strings and the need for them.  The
Mark> gotchas list even calls the backslash escape character itself a
Mark> "gotcha".
Mark> Does everyone agree with this?  Does anyone have any idea how to
Mark> fix these?  What could possible replace the backslash esc char?

Backslash escaping is widely used, and it'd be gotcha-ish to not use
it as an escape character, if you ask me. I only ever use raw (r'abc')
strings for regular expressions, but for those, they increase
legibility quite a bit, I think.

As I see it, the best alternative to the usual way of handling escape
characters is for Strings to have a 'process escape characters' method
that would... well, treat escape characters like escape characters.
I'm not certain how clear that was, so here's an example:

O>> 'a\tb\nc'
a\tb\nc
O>> 'a\tb\nc'.processEscapeCharacters()
a       b
c

Personally I'm in favour of preserving escape characters by default,
if for no other reason than consistency with just about every other
langauge around. If escape characters are a Python gotcha, then
Python is not the sole perpetrator. as for r'abc' being a gotcha... I
don't know, really. How often is that notation used outside of regular
expressions? For the longest time, I even thought that it was specific
_to_ regular expressions. :o) I don't mind either, but my opinions on
the subject aren't overly strong.

Martin

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