Convert line from BASH to Python

Question

I have a line in a BASH script that looks like

 VAR="stuff=1"$'\n'"more_stuff=1"$'\n'"even_more_stuff='abc'"

I have two questions, what does

 "$'\n'

do?

and What would that line look like in Python?

Answer 1

bash don't interpret escape characters in string so if we write "\\n" it prints it as it is. To avoid this we use $'\\n' for line break.

In short its for line break in bash.

Answer 2

ANSI C quoting :

Words of the form $'string' are treated specially. The word expands to string, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard.

So, $'\\n' in bash is "\\n" in Python.

In bash, you can stick strings together. "a""b" is the same as "ab" . In your line, to allow for different ways of quoting, you're sticking together five different strings; three are normal double-quoted ones, and in between there are two ANSI C quoted. In Python, you can do almost the same, but with a space in between: "a" "b" is equivalent to "ab" . The literal translation would thus be be

var = "stuff=1" "\\n" "more_stuff=1" "\\n" "even_more_stuff='abc'"

but you'd normally write it as

var = "stuff=1\\nmore_stuff=1\\neven_more_stuff='abc'"

Answer 3

bash and zsh interprets $'\\n' as a new line

VAR="stuff=1"$'\n'"more_stuff=1"$'\n'"even_more_stuff='abc'"
echo "$VAR"

output

stuff=1
more_stuff=1
even_more_stuff='abc'

in python

VAR = "stuff=1\nmore_stuff=1\neven_more_stuff='abc'"
print VAR

output

stuff=1
more_stuff=1
even_more_stuff='abc'