Is there a way to convert a regular string to a raw string so that one could get from '\bblah' to r'\bblah' other than parsing the string and modifying the escapes?
There's no such thing as a raw string, only raw string literals. In other words, it's a syntax to tell the Python interpreter which characters in your string are 'special' and has no effect on strings not input as literals directly within your code. Strings from files or any input besides the interactive Python shell will already be what you're looking for.
-- Brian Beck Adventurer of the First Order -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
