How to make a single backslash string

Question

I'd like to make a list which is literally this: '\\' . But doing string = '\\' raises an EOL SyntaxError. How would I do it?

Many answers say to do string = '\\\\' but then when I print the string it shows as '\\\\' not '\\'

EDIT 1 This used to be about a list containing a string ( ['\\'] rather than '\\' ). But I realised the list was not the issue. That's why some of the answers talk about a list.

EDIT 2 This is a vscode notebook issue! More edit It doesn't happen in a standard Jupyter notebook. Even when I try to write string = '\\\\' to a file rather than just print it, it comes out as '\\\\'

Answer 1

The simplest solution to this problem is to use two backslashes: \\\\ . This way, Python sees the first backslash and interprets the second one literally.

ls = ['\\']

Edit :
If you're asking for double backslash then :

ls = [r'\\']

It is called raw string.

Edit on question :
You should use this:

string=r'\\'

Answer 2

You can use double backslashes. Imagine that second one negates it.

ls = ['\\']

Answer 3

The character \\ is an escape character. I means the character after \\ is not considered as a meaningful character.

For example if you want to put a " in a string you can do it by:

string = "There is a \" in my text"

So you should escape \\ inside the string.

tl;dr

the_list = ["\\"]

Answer 4

You can bypass Python string interpolation logic using chr(chr_number) In this case 92 :

>>> li=[chr(92)]
>>> li
['\\'] # that is a SINGLE character of '\'

Then use * to make it any length:

>>> s=chr(92)*3
>>> s
'\\\\\\'
>>> len(s)
3

And it works in f strings as you may want:

>>> f'{chr(92)}'
'\\'