Python and terminal - Strings with special characters

Question

I know the Python thing that if I'm using interactive interpreter and I write '\\\\ ' it prints '\\\\ ' but if if I write print '\\\\ ' it prints '\\ ' .

What I'm trying to do is (in a script called p.py ):

import os
os.system('echo ' + 'string with spaces'.replace(' ', '\ '))

obviously it won't let me do this. I mean, Python manages to add TWO backslashes instead of one but I think it does so only in interactive mode, but the terminal, when passed special chars like \\ , ignores them.

So that, as the output of the provious code, I get:

local:$ string with spaces

and not

local:$ string\ with\ spaces 

I already tried hardcoded strings and everything else in Python, but I guess the problem is with shell strings.

How could I solve this?

It it can help to find alteratives solutions, what I'm trying to do is moving a file from python with the mv command, and this file has spaces in its name.

Answer 1

os.system('echo ' + 'string with spaces'.replace(' ', '\ '))

In that line, the last string '\\ ' will try to escape a space, even though that is not an escape sequence. If you want it to become a space with a preceding backspace, you can either escape the backspace ( '\\\\ ' ), or you can use a raw string which will ignore all escape sequences ( r'\\ ' ).