Escape (insert Backslash) Before Brackets In A Python String

I need to format many strings that contain a similar structure: u'LastName FirstName (Department / Subdepartment)' My wish is to get the string to look like this: u'LastName Fir

Solution 1:

You've already found the most Pythonic way, regex provides a not so readable solution:

>>>import re>>>s = u'LastName FirstName (Department / Subdepartment)'>>>print re.sub(r'([()])', r'\\\1', s)
LastName FirstName \(Department / Subdepartment\)

Solution 2:

you can use re.escape('string').

example:

import re

escaped = re.escape(u'LastName FirstName (Department / Subdepartment)')

Note: This method will return the string with all non-alphanumerics backslashed which includes punctuation and white-space.

Though that may be useful for you.