String backslash characters

[PD]

Hello,

I am new to python, but i am quite curious about the following.

suppose you had

print '\378'

which should not work because \377 is the max. then it displays two
characters (an 8 and a heart in my case...). What else does'nt quite
make sense is that if this is an octal why is an 8 accepted?

for instance is 378 really 11, 111, 1000 which is then the two
characters: <00000001>,<111 1000>. And why is this accepted?

I apologize if this has been discussed or if it is obvious. I would
appreciate it if someone could clear me up.

Yours,
PD

[Dan Bishop]

Re: String backslash characters

PD wrote:[color=blue]
> Hello,
>
> I am new to python, but i am quite curious about the following.
>
> suppose you had
>
> print '\378'
>
> which should not work because \377 is the max. then it displays two
> characters (an 8 and a heart in my case...). What else does'nt quite
> make sense is that if this is an octal why is an 8 accepted?[/color]

Because 8 isn't an octal digit, so it's not part of the escape
sequence, but a separate character. It's just like

print 'This string\47s escape sequence does not include the s.'

Your example displays two characters because it is two characters:
'\037' and '8'.

[Leif K-Brooks]

Re: String backslash characters

PD wrote:[color=blue]
> Hello,
>
> I am new to python, but i am quite curious about the following.
>
> suppose you had
>
> print '\378'
>
> which should not work because \377 is the max. then it displays two
> characters (an 8 and a heart in my case...). What else does'nt quite
> make sense is that if this is an octal why is an 8 accepted?[/color]

It's not doing quite what you think. The '\37' is seen as octal, but
since '8' isn't a valid octal digit, it's seen as the literal character '8'.

In other words, these two lines are equivalent:[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> '\378'[/color][/color][/color]
'\x1f8'[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> '\37' + '8'[/color][/color][/color]
'\x1f8'

[Binu K S]

Re: String backslash characters

'\378' becomes a two character string. The first character is '\37'
and the second character is '8'.
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> str = '\378'
>>> str[0][/color][/color][/color]
'\x1f'[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> str[1][/color][/color][/color]
'8'[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>>[/color][/color][/color]

On 23 Dec 2004 20:53:13 -0800, PD <albaalu@gmail. com> wrote:[color=blue]
> Hello,
>
> I am new to python, but i am quite curious about the following.
>
> suppose you had
>
> print '\378'
>
> which should not work because \377 is the max. then it displays two
> characters (an 8 and a heart in my case...). What else does'nt quite
> make sense is that if this is an octal why is an 8 accepted?
>
> for instance is 378 really 11, 111, 1000 which is then the two
> characters: <00000001>,<111 1000>. And why is this accepted?
>
> I apologize if this has been discussed or if it is obvious. I would
> appreciate it if someone could clear me up.
>
> Yours,
> PD
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>[/color]

[Benji York]

Re: String backslash characters

PD wrote:[color=blue]
> I am new to python, but i am quite curious about the following.
>
> print '\378'
>
> which should not work because \377 is the max. then it displays two
> characters (an 8 and a heart in my case...). What else does'nt quite
> make sense is that if this is an octal why is an 8 accepted?[/color]

It would appear that the parser reads \377 as a single character and
\378 as two (\37 and the "8" character). I'm somewhat surprised you're
seeing a heart and an 8. What OS/language combination are you using?
If you're using English Windows you can get a heart and an "8" with
"print '\38'".
--
Benji York
benji@benjiyork .com