Question

According to the docs, the builtin string encoding string_escape:

Produce[s] a string that is suitable as string literal in Python source code

…while the unicode_escape:

Produce[s] a string that is suitable as Unicode literal in Python source code

So, they should have roughly the same behaviour. BUT, they appear to treat single quotes differently:

>>> print """before '" \0 after""".encode('string-escape')
before \'" \x00 after
>>> print """before '" \0 after""".encode('unicode-escape')
before '" \x00 after

The string_escape escapes the single quote while the Unicode one does not. Is it safe to assume that I can simply:

>>> escaped = my_string.encode('unicode-escape').replace("'", "\\'")

…and get the expected behaviour?

Edit: Just to be super clear, the expected behavior is getting something suitable as a literal.

Answer 1

According to my interpretation of the implementation of unicode-escape and the unicode repr in the CPython 2.6.5 source, yes; the only difference between repr(unicode_string) and unicode_string.encode('unicode-escape') is the inclusion of wrapping quotes and escaping whichever quote was used.

They are both driven by the same function, unicodeescape_string. This function takes a parameter whose sole function is to toggle the addition of the wrapping quotes and escaping of that quote.