How to include a quote in a raw Python string

Consider:

>>> r"what"ever" SyntaxError: invalid syntax >>> r"what\"ever" 'what\\"ever' 

So how do we get the quote, but not the slash?

And please don't suggest r'what"ever', because then the question just becomes how do we include both types of quotes?

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7 Answers

If you want to use double quotes in strings but not single quotes, you can just use single quotes as the delimiter instead:

r'what"ever' 

If you need both kinds of quotes in your string, use a triple-quoted string:

r"""what"ev'er""" 

If you want to include both kinds of triple-quoted strings in your string (an extremely unlikely case), you can't do it, and you'll have to use non-raw strings with escapes.

If you need any type of quoting (single, double, and triple for both) you can "combine"(0) the strings:

>>> raw_string_with_quotes = r'double"' r"single'" r'''double triple""" ''' r"""single triple''' """ >>> print raw_string_with_quotes double"single'double triple""" single triple''' 

You may also "combine"(0) raw strings with non-raw strings:

>>> r'raw_string\n' 'non-raw string\n' 'raw_string\\nnon-raw string\n' 

(0): In fact, the Python parser joins the strings, and it does not create multiple strings. If you add the "+" operator, then multiple strings are created and combined.

Python has more than one way to do strings. The following string syntax would allow you to use double quotes:

'''what"ever''' 

Nevermind, the answer is raw triple-quoted strings:

r"""what"ever""" 

Since I stumbled on this answer, and it greatly helped me, but I found a minor syntactic issue, I felt I should save others possible frustration. The triple quoted string works for this scenario as described, but note that if the " you want in the string occurs at the end of the string itself:

somestr = """This is a string with a special need to have a " in it at the end"""" 

You will hit an error at execution because the """" (4) quotes in a row confuses the string reader, as it thinks it has hit the end of the string already and then finds a random " out there. You can validate this by inserting a space into the 4 quotes like so: " """ and it will not have the error.

In this special case you will need to either use:

somestr = 'This.....at the end"' 

or use the method described above of building multiple strings with mixed " and ' and then concatenating them after the fact.

Just to include new Python f String compatible functionality:

var_a = 10 f"""This is my quoted variable: "{var_a}". """ 

Use:

dqote='"' sqote="'" 

Use the '+' operator and dqote and squote variables to get what you need.

If I want sed -e s/",u'"/",'"/g -e s/^"u'"/"'"/, you can try the following:

dqote='"' sqote="'" cmd1="sed -e s/" + dqote + ",u'" + dqote + "/" + dqote + ",'" + dqote + '/g -e s/^"u' + sqote + dqote + '/' + dqote + sqote + dqote + '/'