Question

I have this interactive session:

>>> str = '192.168.1.1'
>>> str = str.replace('.','\.')
>>> str
'192\\.168\\.1\\.1'

I want the out put to be: 192\.168\.1\.1 instead of 192\\.168\\.1\\.1

How can I achieve this? Why is it behaving this way?

Answer 1

Use print str instead of str:

>> str = '192.168.1.1'
>>> str = str.replace('.','\.')
>>> str
'192\\.168\\.1\\.1'
>>> print str
192\.168\.1\.1

Your string is the one you expect it to be, but when you just dump the object, python is showing it to you in a form you could use to assign to another string – that means escaping the \ characters.