I don't want you getting more confused rather than less - newcomers are sometimes confused by Python's encoding of backslashes and such when printing out strings. What is your evidence for the assertion that c is set to \\n rather than \n?I'm using Python 2.4 on Windows XP SP2.
I'm trying to receive a command line argument that is a newline (\n)
Here is the command line to use
sample.py "\n"
Here is a sample.py script
import sys
c = sys.argv[1]
# when run c is set to \\n instead of \n.
I created a test batch file
echo %1
to confirm that it was not the cmd.exe command processor causing the issue.
It appears that Python treats the comand line string as a raw string.
Is this a bug? If not what is the best way to work around the issue?
Obviously I could use a hack
if c == '\\n': c = '\n'
But surely there is a better way.
NOTE that I used \n in my sample but I also want to support other escape sequences too.
In Unix, it's easier to avoid this, since the shell lets you enter multi-line strings (note that these lines may wrap in the mail):
[EMAIL PROTECTED] sholden]$ python -c "import sys; print repr(sys.argv[1])" "\n"
'\\n'
[EMAIL PROTECTED] sholden]$ python -c "import sys; print repr(sys.argv[1])" "
> "
'\n'
The first case simply demonstrates that the shell doesn't interpret backslash escape sequences. I used repr() because that's what the interpreter will print if you enter an expression at the interactive prompt. The first case shows that the argument is two characters - you can verify this using the len() function.
The second case shows how (with a sensible command shell) you can provide a newline as an argument.
In Windows we can emulate the first case exactly: C:\Steve>C:\python24\python -c "import sys; print repr(sys.argv[1])" "\n" '\\n'
Unfortunately Windows XP's command interpreter doesn't bother to wait until you close a double-quote left open at the end of a line:
C:\Steve>\python24\python -c "import sys; print repr(sys.argv[1])" " ''
So someone else will have to tell you how to do that, but you should be clear about what's happening before you try and correct the problem.
regards Steve -- Meet the Python developers and your c.l.py favorites March 23-25 Come to PyCon DC 2005 http://www.pycon.org/ Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
