How do you put special characters in a string in python?

I am making a set in Python to house all the symbols on my keyboard, but obviously a few pose some issues. Is there a way to get them all in there without encountering problems?

Here is my set:

symbols = {`,~,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,),_,-,+,=,{,[,},},|,\,:,;,",',<,,,>,.,?,/}

To get around commenting out most of it, since in Python # is to comment, I enclosed everything like so:

symbols = {'`','~','!','@','#','$','%','^','&','*','(',')','_','-','+','=','{','[','}','}','|','\',':',';','"',''','<',',','>','.','?','/'}

Which works for that character, but now I can already see an issue when I come across the ' and \. Is there a better way to make this set?

Escape Characters

To insert characters that are illegal in a string, use an escape character.

An escape character is a backslash \ followed by the character you want to insert.

An example of an illegal character is a double quote inside a string that is surrounded by double quotes:

Example

You will get an error if you use double quotes inside a string that is surrounded by double quotes:

txt = "We are the so-called "Vikings" from the north."

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To fix this problem, use the escape character \":

Example

The escape character allows you to use double quotes when you normally would not be allowed:

txt = "We are the so-called \"Vikings\" from the north."

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Other escape characters used in Python:

On this page: commenting with #, multi-line strings with """ """, printing multiple objects, the backslash "\" as the escape character, '\t', '\n', '\r', and '\\'.

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Video Summary

• Most of the print statements in this script were commented out initially, which were uncommented throughout the video. This is the shell output.
• As stated in earlier tutorials, the print function tells Python to immediately display a given string once the command is executed. To designate a string for the print function to display, surround it in either single-quotes (' ') or double-quotes (" "). Both options are available so you can still use quotes within your string if need be. Ex: print "how are you doin' today?"
• If the pound symbol (#) is placed before a command or any sort of string of characters, the command will appear in red and Python will ignore it during code execution. This can be used within Python to provide helpful comments to those looking at your code, or to "turn off" certain lines of code in order to test for bugs.
• Surrounding a string with triple double-quotes (""" """) allows you to have any combination of quotes and line breaks within a string and Python will still interpret it as a single entity.

Learn More

• You can specify multiple strings with the print statement. Just separate them out with a comma ',', and they will be printed with a space in between:

  >>> print 'apple', 'orange', 'pear' apple orange pear

• In Python strings, the backslash "\" is a special character, also called the "escape" character. It is used in representing certain whitespace characters: "\t" is a tab, "\n" is a newline, and "\r" is a carriage return.

  >>> print 'apple\torange' apple orange >>> print 'apple\norange' apple orange

• Conversely, prefixing a special character with "\" turns it into an ordinary character. This is called "escaping". For example, "\'" is the single quote character. 'It\'s raining' therefore is a valid string and equivalent to "It's raining". Likewise, '"' can be escaped: "\"hello\"" is a string begins and ends with the literal double quote character. Finally, "\" can be used to escape itself: "\\" is the literal backslash character.

  >>> print 'It\'s raining' It's raining >>> 'It\'s raining' # Same string specified differently "It's raining" >>> print "\"hello\"" "hello" >>> print '"\\" is the backslash' # Try with "\" instead of "\\" "\" is the backslash

• There are tons of handy functions that are defined on strings, called string methods. Learn about the ones on substringhood and also on case manipulation in this tutorial. This part 2 tutorial covers string methods for finding where a particular substring is located, and also for testing whether or not certain condition holds for every character.
• Once you get comfortable with lists (upcoming), you should also check out Splitting and Joining Strings.

Explore

• Think Python has an excellent chapter (Ch.8 Strings) devoted to strings. It gives a comprehensive overview on what one can do with this data type.

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