Escape Characters

Some characters are special inside a string. An escape character uses a backslash to say "treat the next character literally".

The classic problem

This breaks because the quotes collide:

python
txt = "We are the so-called "Vikings" from the north."

### SyntaxError

Fix it by escaping the inner quotes:

python
txt = "We are the so-called \"Vikings\" from the north."
print(txt)

We are the so-called "Vikings" from the north.

Common escape sequences

` | new line |

Examples

python
print("Line1
Line2")

### prints on two lines
print("Col1\tCol2")

### tab between words
print("It\'s mine")

### It's mine

Raw strings

A raw string, prefixed with r, ignores escapes. Handy for things like Windows paths and regex:

python
print(r"C:\Users
ame")

### prints C:\Users
ame

TL;DR

• A backslash escapes the next character.
• Common escapes: newline, \t tab, \" double quote, \' single quote, \\ backslash.
• A raw string (r"...") keeps backslashes as-is.