Question

This is probably basic, but I can’t find a solution. I have a string, e.g.,

s = 'a,b,c,d'

I’d like to convert the commas to tabs. But using .replace, e.g.,

s.replace(',', '\t')

gives me

>>> s.replace(',', '\t')
'a\tb\tc\td'

I also tried converting to a list and then adding the tabs with a .join, e.g.,

'\t'.join(s.split(','))

but that gives the same result. How can I have the tabs actually inserted as tabs?

Answer 1

>>> print s.replace(',', '\t')
a    b    c    d

Right now you are see’ing repr(s.replace(',', '\t')) in the interpreter without the print statement. repr() will show each actual character in a string and the interpreter uses that as the default method to print out the result of operations.

Unless you wanted 4 spaces instead; which would just be:

>>> print s.replace(',', (' '*4))
a    b    c    d