How are escape characters counted towards the length of a string?

Frequently Asked Questions Python FAQ
1

Question

In the context of this exercise, if we have escape characters in a string, how are they counted towards the length of the string?

Answer

Escaped characters in Python only count as 1 towards a string’s length, like a single character would. So, for the escape character \", this will actually only count as 1 towards the length, rather than 2. The backslash isn’t counted.

Example

# Because \’ is an escape character, it will only be 
# counted as 1 toward the length of the string.
message = "I\'m hungry"

# length is 10 (includes the space character)
print(len(message))
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2

I just tried this example in codeacademy’s terminal and here are the results that left me somewhat confused, so I would be very thankful for any help:

first of all, typing the following code line didn’t end my string before I thought it would, how is it possible:

message = "I'm hungry"

Then I went with print(len(message)) and it gave me 10. Ok. Finally I created another variable:

message2 = "I\'m hungry"

just to go again with print(len(message2)) and again it gave me 10. The only conclusion I can get from here is that backslash isn’t counted at all in a string’s length. Is it true?

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3

Yes, true. The backslash doesn’t count as a printable character because it has special meaning… Escape. It tells the parser that the character following is printable, not a token.

We would not use it in this case, though, since ' is different from " and will be printed without escapement.

message = 'I\'m hungry'

Now it is actually doing what is expected. Escape and treat as a printable character.

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4

It would be better if the answer said escaped character only count as one, rather than escape characters.

so the escaped " only counts as one.

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5

Hi,
The escape characters are not counted but the double quotes are counted you can check in the link below

1 Like
6

Yes, absolutely it’s right.

The compiler is never count the sign(SYMBOL) of (") and sign of ( \ ) → back slash operator!
Because they’re used in strings as per limitations.

If you print the following code,
you will get expected output :yo-yo:

password = "theycallme"crazy"91"
print(password)

7

Can someone help me understand how escape characters work relative to lists?

For example:

image
image1267×433 40.1 KB

As you can see on line 3 of the compiler I included \n which skipped a line. What I’m trying to do is the same thing - i.e. on line 6 of the compiler how would I add \n to skip a line between the last line and the “skip a line” text in the terminal?

Thank you for your help!

8

Generally speaking, it is best to leave data as it is, so we won’t be adding the newline character to the list or the data points. However, we can write a small function to pretty print and hand in the data for screen output.

def pprint(s):
    for x in s.split(', '):
        a, b, c = x.split(':')
        print (f"Title: {a}\nAuthor: {b}\nYear: {c}\n")
    print ()

pprint(highlighted_poems)

Title: Afterimages
Author: Audre Lorde
Year: 1997

Title:  The Shadow
Author: William Carlos Williams
Year: 1915

Title: Ecstasy
Author: Gabriela Mistral
Year: 1925

Title:   Georgia Dusk
Author: Jean Toomer
Year: 1923

Title:   Parting Before Daybreak
Author: An Qi
Year: 2014

Title: The Untold Want
Author: Walt Whitman
Year: 1871

Title: Mr. Grumpledump's Song
Author: Shel Silverstein
Year: 2004

Title: Angel Sound Mexico City
Author: Carmen Boullosa
Year: 2013

Title: In Love
Author: Kamala Suraiyya
Year: 1965

Title: Dream Variations
Author: Langston Hughes
Year: 1994

Title: Dreamwood
Author: Adrienne Rich
Year: 1987


>>>
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