Escaping Special Characters

When using Python, there are often times when you need to represent special characters within your code.

For example, consider the following case where you need to include quotes(") inside a string defined with quotes.

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# Error occurs
print("He said, "Python is fun!"")

However, the above code will result in an error because it cannot distinguish between the quotes used for defining the string and the quotes inside the string.

This is where escape characters come into play.

In programming, an escape (escape character) means to "escape" a certain character from its usual context.

Escape characters have special meanings beyond regular characters; they help in representing specific characters within strings or altering their default behavior.

Let's look at some of the most commonly used escape characters.

If you need to include double or single quotes within a string, use \" and \' respectively, with a backslash (\) to escape them.

To include double quotes in a string, place a backslash before the double quote. For single quotes, do the same with a single quote.

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# Output: He said, "Python is fun!"
print("He said, \"Python is fun!\"")

# Output: It's a beautiful day
print('It\'s a beautiful day')

\n signifies a newline (the cursor moves to the beginning of the next line).

Wherever you place \n inside a string, the following content will appear on the next line when printed.

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# Output:
# Hello.
# Nice to meet you!
print("Hello.\nNice to meet you!")

Because of the \n escape character, "Hello." and "Nice to meet you!" appear on separate lines.

\t is used to insert a tab space.

This helps create even spacing between characters and align data neatly.

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# Output: Name    Age    Occupation
print("Name\tAge\tOccupation")

In the above code, \t adds a tab space between "Name", "Age", and "Occupation", making the output well-formatted.

\\ is used to represent a single backslash (\) within a string.

Since a backslash is used to indicate an escape character, you'll have to type it twice to show it as a regular character in your output.

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# Output: C:\Users\John
print("C:\\Users\\John")