Preserve “\t”, “\n”, “\r” when spliting a string using shlex in python

Question

I am trying to split a string using shlex but I want to preserve(literally) "\t", "\n", "\r".

Example:

text = "a=\t\n\r\example c=d"
sp_text = shlex.split(text)
print(sp_text)

['a=', 'example', 'c=d']

But I want to print this:

['a=\t\n\r\example', 'c=d']

Can I do that using shlex?

/Angelos

Answer 1

You could do the following:

import shlex

text = "a=\t\n\r\example c=d"

sh = shlex.shlex(text)
sh.whitespace = ' '
sh.whitespace_split = True

sp_text = list(sh)
print(sp_text)

Output

['a=\t\n\r\\example', 'c=d']

Notice that the example above only uses the single whitespace for splitting, the idea of the example is to illustrate how to manipulate the shlex whitespace.