Guide Python Beginner

9.3 Escape Characters

The full table of Python string escape sequences, including the less common octal and hex character codes, expanding on the introductory table in Chapter 4.

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The core escape sequences (\n, \t, \\, quotes) were introduced in 4.13 Escape Characters. This is the complete reference, including the octal and hex forms.

Escape	Meaning	Example
`\n`	Newline	`"a\nb"` → two lines
`\t`	Tab	`"a\tb"` → `"a b"`
`\\`	Literal backslash	`"a\\b"` → `a\b`
`\'`	Literal single quote	`'it\'s'` → `it's`
`\"`	Literal double quote	`"say \"hi\""` → `say "hi"`
`\r`	Carriage return	used in some line-ending formats
`\b`	Backspace	moves cursor back one position
`\f`	Form feed	page-break control character
`\ooo`	Character by octal code	`\101` → `'A'`
`\xhh`	Character by hex code	`\x41` → `'A'`

>>> print("\101\102\103")     # octal escapes
ABC
>>> print("\x41\x42\x43")     # hex escapes
ABC

Quick Interview Answer

“Beyond the everyday \n, \t, and quote escapes, Python also supports character-by-code escapes: \ooo for octal and \xhh for hex. Both resolve to a single character at parse time — \x41 and \101 are two different ways of writing the letter 'A'. These are rarely needed for hand-written code but show up when strings are generated programmatically from raw byte or code-point values.”

Common Mistakes

Confusing \x41 (a single hex-escaped character) with a literal two-character sequence — it always collapses to one character in the resulting string.
Writing an octal escape with a digit \8 or \9 and expecting it to work — octal digits only go up to 7, so those aren’t valid octal escapes.
Reaching for raw strings (r"...") when the octal/hex escapes are actually needed — a raw string disables all escape processing, including these.

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