the reason: python string assignments accidentally change '\b' into '\x08' and '\a' into '\x07', why Python did this?

Question

Had two answers and some comments, mentioned another question, but all had not provided REASON, why Python did this changes? such as \'/b\' is \'/x08\' is just the result, b

Answer 1

Escape sequence \a, \b is equivalnt to \x07, \x08.

>>> '\a'
'\x07'
>>> '\b'
'\x08'

You should escape \ itself to represent backslash literally:

>>> '\\a'
'\\a'
>>> '\\b'
'\\b'

or use raw string literals:

>>> r'\a'
'\\a'
>>> r'\b'
'\\b'