Why do I get a SyntaxError for a Unicode escape in my file path?

python windows filenames
inspired picture inspired · Aug 6, 2013 · Viewed 210.7k times · Source

The folder I want to get to is called python and is on my desktop.

I get the following error when I try to get to it

>>> os.chdir('C:\Users\expoperialed\Desktop\Python')
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

Answer

Martijn Pieters picture Martijn Pieters · Aug 6, 2013

You need to use a raw string, double your slashes or use forward slashes instead:

r'C:\Users\expoperialed\Desktop\Python'
'C:\\Users\\expoperialed\\Desktop\\Python'
'C:/Users/expoperialed/Desktop/Python'

In regular python strings, the \U character combination signals a extended Unicode codepoint escape.

You can hit any number of other issues, for any of the recognised escape sequences, such as \a or \t or \x, etc.

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