Process escape sequences in a string in Python

The correct thing to do is use the ‘string-escape’ code to decode the string. >>> myString = “spam\\neggs” >>> decoded_string = bytes(myString, “utf-8”).decode(“unicode_escape”) # python3 >>> decoded_string = myString.decode(‘string_escape’) # python2 >>> print(decoded_string) spam eggs Don’t use the AST or eval. Using the string codecs is much safer.