MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Help with quote marks in regular expressions

eschwartz · 07-20-2015, 01:35 PM

Code:

r'''<p>''''

Four single-quotes in a row -- the first three terminated the string literal, the last one began a new string literal.
You would need to escape it, but as you may have noticed, the backslash stays in the string. This only happens because you are using a raw string literal -- using

Code:

html = re.sub('''<p>' ''', '''<p>\'''', html)

works as expected.
Raw string literals are useful for strings in which you expect to have literal backslashes. That does not apply here.

Double-quotes work too, of course.

If you need to use both single- and double-quotes, make sure to escape whatever your delimiter is.

07-20-2015, 01:35 PM	#3
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	Code: r'''<p>'''' Four single-quotes in a row -- the first three terminated the string literal, the last one began a new string literal. You would need to escape it, but as you may have noticed, the backslash stays in the string. This only happens because you are using a raw string literal -- using Code: html = re.sub('''<p>' ''', '''<p>\'''', html) works as expected. Raw string literals are useful for strings in which you expect to have literal backslashes. That does not apply here. Double-quotes work too, of course. If you need to use both single- and double-quotes, make sure to escape whatever your delimiter is. Last edited by eschwartz; 07-20-2015 at 01:46 PM.