Question

I have problem with refering to special symbol in string:

I have: path='C:\dir\dir1\dir2\filename.doc'

and I want filename.

When I try: filename=path[path.rfind("\"):-4]

then interpreter says it’s an error line right from “\” since is treated as a comment.

Answer 1

You can use "\\", technically it would be better to use os.path.sep if you insist on using backslashes. But better yet, use / in your paths, it works fine on Windows

Python has builtin functions to manipulate paths. Note that you need to double the backslashes if you still prefer them to forwardslashes

>>> import os
>>> path='C:\\dir\\dir1\\dir2\\filename.doc'
>>> os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(path))
('filename', '.doc')

and using forwardslashes

>>> path='C:/dir/dir1/dir2/filename.doc'
>>> os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(path))
('filename', '.doc')