Question

Given a string named line whose raw version has this value:

\rRAWSTRING

how can I detect if it has the escape character \r? What I’ve tried is:

if repr(line).startswith('\r'):
    blah...

but it doesn’t catch it. I also tried find, such as:

if repr(line).find('\r') != -1:
    blah

doesn’t work either. What am I missing?

thx!

EDIT:

thanks for all the replies and the corrections re terminolgy and sorry for the confusion.

OK, if i do this

print repr(line)

then what it prints is:

'\rSET ENABLE ACK\n'

(including the single quotes). i have tried all the suggestions, including:

line.startswith(r'\r')
line.startswith('\\r') 

each of which returns False. also tried:

line.find(r'\r')
line.find('\\r')

each of which returns -1

Answer 1

If:

print repr(line)

Returns:

'\rSET ENABLE ACK\n'

Then:

line.find('\r')
line.startswith('\r')
'\r' in line

are what you are looking for. Example:

>>> line = '\rSET ENABLE ACK\n'
>>> print repr(line)
'\rSET ENABLE ACK\n'
>>> line.find('\r')
0
>>> line.startswith('\r')
True
>>> '\r' in line
True

repr() returns a display string. It actually contains the quotes and backslashes you see when you print the line:

>>> print line
SET ENABLE ACK

>>> print repr(line)
'\rSET ENABLE ACK\n'
>>> print len(line)
16
>>> print len(repr(line))
20