python - Can't escape escape characters in string

Question

In an attempt to answer this question, I managed to get the string to print the escape characters by escaping the backslash.

When I try to generalize it to escape all escaped characters, it seems to do nothing:

>>> a = "word
another word
third word"
>>> a
'word
another word
third word'
>>> print a
word
another word
        third word
>>> b = a.replace("", "")
>>> b
'word
another word
third word'
>>> print b
word
another word
        third word

but this same method for specific escape characters, it does work:

>>> b = a.replace('
', '\n')
>>> print b
word
another word
    third word
>>> b
'word\nanother word\nthird word'

Is there a general way to achieve this? Should include , , , etc.

Answer 1

Define your string as raw using r'text', like in the code below:

a = r"word
another word
third word"
print(a)
word
another word
third word

b = "word
another word
third word"
print(b)
word
another word
        third word