Develop Reference

Python treating carriage return as newline character. What can I do instead?

I want to write a code which prints Loading, and then erases that and prints Loading., erases that too and prints Loading.. and so on. So I tried using \r, but python interprets it as \n. Is there a charcter I can use instead of \r?
I've tried using \b instead, but Python doesn't recognize it, either. For example, if I print qwerty\buiop, it just prints qwertyuiop.
This is the code I tried, using carriage return:
import time
for y in range (5):
for i in range (4):
print("Loading","."*i, end="\r")
time.sleep(0.5)
However, instead of printing how I want it to, it prints like
Loading
Loading .
Loading ..
Loading ...
in different lines.
How do I solve this problem? Is there a different character I can use?
I'm using IDLE and MacOS.
Thank you so much!

I know you probably know an answer by now, but for people still looking for one:
Try using an empty end, while using \r at the beginning of each print to overwrite the previous one.
import time
for i in range (4):
print("\rLoading","."*i, end ="")
time.sleep(0.5)

Try running your program in terminal.
Different shells interpret the \r character in different ways. A lot of them will write out each print as a separate output rather than one ongoing stream. Terminal should interpret it the way you are thinking

Is it possible to print without using the print function in Python?

I wondered whether it is possible to print (for example a string) in Python without the print function. This can be done by a command or by some trick.
For example, in C there are printf and puts.
Can someone show me a way to print or to deny this possibility?

sys.stdout.write("hello world\n")

import sys
sys.stdout.write("hello")

You can use
sys.stdout.write()
Sometimes I find sys.stdout.write more convenient than print for printing many things to a single line, as I find the ending comma syntax of print for suppressing the newline inconvenient.

Printing directly from read() in Python adds an extra newline

I've got a Python script that prints out a file to the shell:
print open(lPath).read()
If I pass in the path to a file with the following contents (no brackets, they're just here so newlines are visible):
> One
> Two
>
I get the following output:
> One
> Two
>
>
Where's that extra newline coming from? I'm running the script with bash on an Ubuntu system.

Use
print open(lPath).read(), # notice the comma at the end.
print adds a newline. If you end the print statement with a comma, it'll add a space instead.
You can use
import sys
sys.stdout.write(open(lPath).read())
If you don't need any of the special features of print.
If you switch to Python 3, or use from __future__ import print_function on Python 2.6+, you can use the end argument to stop the print function from adding a newline.
print(open(lPath).read(), end='')

Maybe you should write:
print open(lPath).read(),
(notice trailing comma at the end).
This will prevent print from placing a new-line at the end of its output.

Python: 2.6 and 3.1 string matching inconsistencies

I wrote my module in Python 3.1.2, but now I have to validate it for 2.6.4.
I'm not going to post all my code since it may cause confusion.
Brief explanation:
I'm writing a XML parser (my first interaction with XML) that creates objects from the XML file. There are a lot of objects, so I have a 'unit test' that manually scans the XML and tries to find a matching object. It will print out anything that doesn't have a match.
I open the XML file and use a simple 'for' loop to read line-by-line through the file. If I match a regular expression for an 'application' (XML has different 'application' nodes), then I add it to my dictionary, d, as the key. I perform a lxml.etree.xpath() query on the title and store it as the value.
After I go through the whole thing, I iterate through my dictionary, d, and try to match the key to my value (I have to use the get() method from my 'application' class). Any time a mismatch is found, I print the key and title.
Python 3.1.2 has all matching items in the dictionary, so nothing is printed. In 2.6.4, every single value is printed (~600) in all. I can't figure out why my string comparisons aren't working.
Without further ado, here's the relevant code:
for i in d:
if i[1:-2] != d[i].get('id'):
print('X%sX Y%sY' % (i[1:-3], d[i].get('id')))
I slice the strings because the strings are different. Where the key would be "9626-2008olympics_Prod-SH"\n the value would be 9626-2008olympics_Prod-SH, so I have to cut the quotes and newline. I also added the Xs and Ys to the print statements to make sure that there wasn't any kind of whitespace issues.
Here is an example line of output:
X9626-2008olympics_Prod-SHX Y9626-2008olympics_Prod-SHY
Remember to ignore the Xs and Ys. Those strings are identical. I don't understand why Python2 can't match them.
Edit:
So the problem seems to be the way that I am slicing.
In Python3,
if i[1:-2] != d[i].get('id'):
this comparison works fine.
In Python2,
if i[1:-3] != d[i].get('id'):
I have to change the offset by one.
Why would strings need different offsets? The only possible thing that I can think of is that Python2 treats a newline as two characters (i.e. '\' + 'n').
Edit 2:
Updated with requested repr() information.
I added a small amount of code to produce the repr() info from the "2008olympics" exmpale above. I have not done any slicing. It actually looks like it might not be a unicode issue. There is now a "\r" character.
Python2:
'"9626-2008olympics_Prod-SH"\r\n'
'9626-2008olympics_Prod-SH'
Python3:
'"9626-2008olympics_Prod-SH"\n'
'9626-2008olympics_Prod-SH'
Looks like this file was created/modified on Windows. Is there a way in Python2 to automatically suppress '\r'?

You are printing i[1:-3] but comparing i[1:-2] in the loop.
Very Important Question
Why are you writing code to parse XML when lxml will do all that for you? The point of unit tests is to test your code, not to ensure that the libraries you are using work!

Russell Borogrove is right.
Python 3 defaults to unicode, and the newline character is correctly interpreted as one character. That's why my offset of [1:-2] worked in 3 because I needed to eliminate three characters: ", ", and \n.
In Python 2, the newline is being interpreted as two characters, meaning I have to eliminate four characters and use [1:-3].
I just added a manual check for the Python major version.
Here is the fixed code:
for i in d:
# The keys in D contain quotes and a newline which need
# to be removed. In v3, newline = 1 char and in v2,
# newline = 2 char.
if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
if i[1:-3] != d[i].get('id'):
print('%s %s' % (i[1:-3], d[i].get('id')))
else:
if i[1:-2] != d[i].get('id'):
print('%s %s' % (i[1:-2], d[i].get('id')))
Thanks for the responses everyone! I appreciate your help.

repr() and %r format are your friends ... they show you (for basic types like str/unicode/bytes) exactly what you've got, including type.
Instead of
print('X%sX Y%sY' % (i[1:-3], d[i].get('id')))
do
print('%r %r' % (i, d[i].get('id')))
Note leaving off the [1:-3] so that you can see what is in i before you slice it.
Update after comment "You are perfectly right about comparing the wrong slice. However, once I change it, python2.6 works, but python3 has the problem now (i.e. it doesn't match any objects)":
How are you opening the file (two answers please, for Python 2 and 3). Are you running on Windows? Have you tried getting the repr() as I suggested?
Update after actual input finally provided by OP:
If, as it appears, your input file was created on Windows (lines are separated by "\r\n"), you can read Windows and *x text files portably by using the "universal newlines" option ... open('datafile.txt', 'rU') on Python2 -- read this. Universal newlines mode is the default in Python3. Note that the Python3 docs say that you can use 'rU' also in Python3; this would save you having to test which Python version you are using.

I don't understand what you're doing exactly, but would you try using strip() instead of slicing and see whether it helps?
for i in d:
stripped = i.strip()
if stripped != d[i].get('id'):
print('X%sX Y%sY' % (stripped, d[i].get('id')))

Prevent python from printing newline

I have this code in Python
inputted = input("Enter in something: ")
print("Input is {0}, including the return".format(inputted))
that outputs
Enter in something: something
Input is something
, including the return
I am not sure what is happening; if I use variables that don't depend on user input, I do not get the newline after formatting with the variable. I suspect Python might be taking in the newline as input when I hit return.
How can I make it so that the input does not include any newlines so that I may compare it to other strings/characters? (e.g. something == 'a')

You are correct - a newline is included in inputted. To remove it, you can just call strip("\r\n") to remove the newline from the end:
print("Input is {0}, including the return".format(inputted.strip("\r\n")))
This won't cause any issues if inputted does not have a newline at the end, but will remove any that are there, so you can use this whether inputted is user input or not.
If you don't want any newlines in the text at all, you can use inputted.replace("\r\n", "") to remove all newlines.

Your problem is actually Eclipse. Assuming that you use PyDev, I was able to reproduce the problem. When entering something in the Eclipse console, the problem occurs as described in your question. But when directly executing the very same script with the Python 3.1.1 interpreter, inputted does not include a newline character.
I investigated the Python source code and found out input() uses GNU readline if stdin is interactive (i.e. a TTY or prompt, however you want to call it), but falls back to the .readline() method of the stdin object if necessary. Then, if the result of readline ends with \n, that character is removed. Note: No CR-LF or LF-CR handling here (in the fallback case)!
So I wrote this little script to see what actually happens:
import sys
from io import StringIO
for stdin in [sys.stdin, StringIO("test\r\ntest\r\n")]:
sys.stdin = stdin
print("readline returns this: " + repr(sys.stdin.readline()))
inputted = input("Enter in something: ")
print("inputted: " + repr(inputted))
print("inputted is printed like this: --> {0} <--".format(inputted))
It first executes the code with the normal stdin (console or Eclipse console) and then with a prepared stdin containing the text test\r\ntest\r\n.
Try and run the script in Eclipse - you must enter a string twice. The conclusion: Pressing Enter in the Eclipse console will produce CR-LF ("\r\n"). Printing "\r" in the Eclipse console will jump to the next line.
On the other side, running it in the Windows console will produce the expected output: input() returns a string without a newline at the end because (I guess) GNU readline is used. With the prepared stdin StringIO("test\r\n"), the input() result is "test\r" as in Eclipse (although not printed as newline).
Hope this all makes sense... but what I still don't know is if that is expected behavior of Eclipse.

If you only want to stript the last line endings, you could use rstrip.
inputted.rstrip ("\r\n")

inputted = inputted.strip()
Edit: As noted, this will kill all whitespace at the start and end. A way to get rid of only the trailing newline is:
import re
inputted = re.sub("[\n\r]+$", "", inputted)