I had a similar problem and stumbled upon this question, and know thanks to Nick Olson-Harris’ answer that the solution lies with changing the string.
Two ways of solving it:
-
Get the path you want using native python functions, e.g.:
test = os.getcwd() # In case the path in question is your current directory print(repr(test))
This makes it platform independent and it now works with
.encode
. If this is an option for you, it’s the more elegant solution. -
If your string is not a path, define it in a way compatible with python strings, in this case by escaping your backslashes:
test="C:\\Windows\\Users\\alexb\\" print(repr(test))