[Python-Dev] \u and \U escapes in raw unicode string literals (original) (raw)

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Sat May 12 00:27:51 CEST 2007

Martin v. Löwis wrote:

This is what prompted my question, actually: in Py3k, in the str/unicode unification branch, r"\u1234" changes meaning: before the unification, this was an 8-bit string, where the \u was not special, but now it is a unicode string, where \u is special.

That is true for non-raw strings also: the meaning of "\u1234" also changes. However, traditionally, there was no escaping mechanism in raw strings in Python, and I feel that this is a good principle, because it is easy to learn (if you leave out the detail that \ can't be the last character in a raw string - which should get fixed also, IMO). +1

Michael Foord

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