operate with python '\' special character in a string

Question

I am trying to iterate in a string and find a character on it and delete it. For example, my string is "HowAre\\youDoing" and I want the string "HowAreyouDoing" back (without the character '\\'. My Loop is:

for c in string:
     if c == '\':

The Point is that '\\' is a Special character and it doesn´t allow me to do it in this way. Does anybody knows how can I proceed? thanks

Answer 1

In python, as in most programing languages, the backslash character is used to introduce a special character, like \\n for newline or \\t for tab (and several more).

If you initialize a string in python with \\y , it will escape it automatically, since \\y is not a valid special character and python assumes that you want the actual character \\ which is escaped to \\\\ :

>>> s = "HowAre\youDoing" 
>>> s
'HowAre\\youDoing'

So, to replace it in your case, just do

>>> s.replace("\\", "")
'HowAreyouDoing'

If you'd like to replace special characters like the aforementioned, you would need to specify the respective special character with an unescaped "\\":

>>> s = "HowAre\nyouDoing" 
>>> s
'HowAre\nyouDoing'
>>> s.replace("\n", "")
'HowAreyouDoing'

Answer 2

You should escape the character

for c in string:
     if c == '\\':