![How to Replace Back Slash Character with Empty String in Python [Duplicate]](https://docuprint.cloud68.co/uploads/how-to-replace-back-slash-character-with_1200.jpg)
I am trying replace a backslash '\' in a string with the following code
string = "<P style='TEXT-INDENT'>\B7 </P>"
result = string.replace("\",'')
result:
------------------------------------------------------------
File "<ipython console>", line 1
result = string.replace("\",'')
^
SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal
Here i don't need the back slashes because actually i am parsing an xml file which has a tag in the above format, so if backslashes are there it is displaying invalid token during parsing
Can i know how to replace the backslashes with empty string in python
7 Answers
We need to specify that we want to replace a string that contains a single backslash. We cannot write that as "\", because the backslash is escaping the intended closing double-quote. We also cannot use a raw string literal for this: r"\" does not work.
Instead, we simply escape the backslash using another backslash:
result = string.replace("\\","")
The error is because you did not add a escape character to your '\', you should give \\ for backslash (\)
In [147]: foo = "a\c\d" # example string with backslashes
In [148]: foo
Out[148]: 'a\\c\\d'
In [149]: foo.replace('\\', " ")
Out[149]: 'a c d'
In [150]: foo.replace('\\', "")
Out[150]: 'acd'
In Python, as explained in the documentation:
The backslash () character is used to escape characters that otherwise have a special meaning, such as newline, backslash itself, or the quote character.
So, in order to replace \ in a string, you need to escape the backslash itself with another backslash, thus:
>>> "this is a \ I want to replace".replace("\\", "?")
'this is a ? I want to replace'
Using regular expressions:
import re
new_string = re.sub("\\\\", "", old_string)
The trick here is that "\\\\" is a string literal describing a string containing two backslashes (each one is escaped), then the regex engine compiles that into a pattern that will match one backslash (doing a separate layer of unescaping).
Adding a solution if string='abcd\nop.png'
result = string.replace("\\","")
This above won't work as it'll give result='abcd\nop.png'.
Here if you see \n is a newline character. So we have to replace backslah char in raw string(as there '\n' won't be detected)
string.encode('unicode_escape')
result = string.replace("\\", "")
#result=abcdnop.png
You need to escape '\' with one extra backslash to compare actually with \.. So you should use '\'..
See Python Documentation - section 2.4 for all the escape sequences in Python.. And how you should handle them..
It's August 2020.
Python 3.8.1
Pandas 1.1.0
At this point in time I used both the double \ backslash AND the r.
df.replace([r'\\'], [''], regex=True, inplace=True)
Cheers.
