[FIXED] Remove \x-escaped sequences from a string

Issue

I have a hex string and I need to compare the string by checking if '\' is in value and then do and do encode operation

value='\x1a\x01'


(Pdb) value.encode("hex")
'1a01'

However when i check like this its returning false

(Pdb) '\\' in value
False

Solution

You can encode the x-escaped sequences using re.sub.

First of all, define a regular expression that will capture these sequences.

import re
pattern = re.compile(r'\\x[0-9a-fA-f]{2}')  # matches \x and two-digit hex value

Note that \x needs to be escaped so that the re compiler doesn't reject it as a bogus regex escape sequence.

Now define a function that will encode the matched sequences.

def enc(match):
    return match.group(0).decode('string-escape').encode('hex')

When encoding, we need to decode from 'string-escape' first because we need to escape the input string so that the \x.. sequences get matched.

Now perform the substitution on a string-escaped version of the input string, remembering to decode the output afterwards (otherwise sequences like \n will be escaped):

s = 'abc\x1a\x01def'
escaped = re.sub(pattern, enc, s.encode('string-escape'))
result = escaped.decode('string-escape')
print result
abc1a01def

Answered By - snakecharmerb