escaping the double quotes in python string

Question

I've a question about double quotes escaping in python string formatting. for example,

    print "How tall are you?",

    height = raw_input()

    print "So you are %r tall" % height

when I put 5" 6' , it returns ' 5\\'6" ' and i don't get why there is a backslash.

Answer 1

You're asking for the representation of the string. Since the string contains both types of quotes, one type must be escaped in order for it to be a proper representation. If you only want what was typed then use %s instead.