Process decimal escape in string - python

I have a file of strings one per line in which non-ascii characters have been escaped with decimal code points. One example line is:
mj\\195\\164ger
(The double backslashes are in the file exactly as printed)
I would like to process this string to produce
mjäger
. Conventionally, python uses hexadecimal escapes rather than decimal escapes (e.g., the above string would be written as mj\xc3\xa4ger, which python can decode:
>>> by=b'mj\xc3\xa4ger'
>>> by.decode('utf-8')
'mjäger'
Python, however, doesn't recognize the decimal escape right away.
I have written a method that correctly manipulates the strings to produce hexadecimal escapes, but these escapes are themselves escaped. How can I get python to process these hexadecimal escapes to create the final string?
import re
hexconst=["0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","a","b","c","d","e","f"]
escapes=re.compile(r"\\[0-9]{3}")
def dec2hex(matchobj):
dec=matchobj.group(0)
dec=int(dec[1:])
digit1=dec//16 #integer division
digit2=dec%16
hex="\\x" + hexconst[digit1] + hexconst[digit2]
return hex
line=r'mj\195\164ger'
print(escapes.sub(dec2hex,line)) #Outputs mj\xc3\xa4ger
What is the final step I'm missing to convert the output of the above from mj\xc3\xa4ger to mjäger? Thanks!

It's much easier. re.sub() can take a callback function instead of a replacement string as an argument:
>>> import re
>>> line=r'mj\195\164ger'
>>> def replace(match):
... return chr(int(match.group(1)))
>>> regex = re.compile(r"\\(\d{1,3})")
>>> new = regex.sub(replace, line)
>>> new
'mj\xc3\xa4ger'
>>> print new
mjäger
In Python 3, strings are Unicode strings, so if you're working with encoded input (like UTF-8 encoded content), then you need to use the proper type which is bytes:
>>> line = rb'mj\195\164ger'
>>> regex = re.compile(rb"\\(\d{1,3})")
>>> def replace(match):
... return int(match.group(1)).to_bytes(1, byteorder="big")
>>> new = regex.sub(replace, line)
>>> new
b'mj\xc3\xa4ger'
>>> print(new.decode("utf-8"))
mjäger

Related

Python prevent decoding HEX to ASCII while removing backslashes from my Var

I want to strip some unwanted symbols from my variable. In this case the symbols are backslashes. I am using a HEX number, and as an example I will show some short simple code down bellow. But I don't want python to convert my HEX to ASCII, how would I prevent this from happening.? I have some long shell codes for asm to work with later which are really long and removing \ by hand is a long process. I know there are different ways like using echo -e "x\x\x\x" > output etc, but my whole script will be written in python.
Thanks
>>> a = "\x31\xC0\x50\x68\x74\x76"
>>> b = a.strip("\\")
>>> print b
1�Phtv
>>> a = "\x31\x32\x33\x34\x35\x36"
>>> b = a.strip("\\")
>>> print b
123456
At the end I would like it to print my var:
>>> print b
x31x32x33x34x35x36
There are no backslashes in your variable:
>>> a = "\x31\xC0\x50\x68\x74\x76"
>>> print(a)
1ÀPhtv
Take newline for example: writing "\n" in Python will give you string with one character -- newline -- and no backslashes. See string literals docs for full syntax of these.
Now, if you really want to write string with such backslashes, you can do it with r modifier:
>>> a = r"\x31\xC0\x50\x68\x74\x76"
>>> print(a)
\x31\xC0\x50\x68\x74\x76
>>> print(a.replace('\\', ''))
x31xC0x50x68x74x76
But if you want to convert a regular string to hex-coded symbols, you can do it character by character, converting it to number ("\x31" == "1" --> 49), then to hex ("0x31"), and finally stripping the first character:
>>> a = "\x31\xC0\x50\x68\x74\x76"
>>> print(''.join([hex(ord(x))[1:] for x in a]))
'x31xc0x50x68x74x76'
There are two problems in your Code.
First the simple one:
strip() just removes one occurrence. So you should use replace("\\", ""). This will replace every backslash with "", which is the same as removing it.
The second problem is pythons behavior with backslashes:
To get your example working you need to append an 'r' in front of your string to indicate, that it is a raw string. a = r"\x31\xC0\x50\x68\x74\x76". In raw strings, a backlash doesn't escape a character but just stay a backslash.
>>> r"\x31\xC0\x50\x68\x74\x76"
'\\x31\\xC0\\x50\\x68\\x74\\x76'

Read hex from file (Python)

I have a file, that contains both hex data and non-hex data.
For example, var _0x36ba=["\x69\x73\x41\x72\x72\x61\x79","\x63\x61\x6C\x6C","\x74\x6F\x53\x74\x72\x69\x6E\x67",]
When I directly paste this code in python console, I got var _0x36ba=["isArray","call","toString",]
But when I try to read the file and print contents, it gives me var _0x36ba=["\\x69\\x73\\x41\\x72\\x72\\x61\\x79","\\x63\\x61\\x6C\\x6C","\\x74\\x6F\\x53\\x74\\x72\\x69\\x6E\\x67","\\
Seems like backslashes are parsed as they are.
How can I read the file and obtain readable output?
You have string literals with \xhh hex escapes. You can decode these with the string_escape encoding:
text.decode('string_escape')
See the Python Specific Encodings section of the codecs module documentation:
string_escape
Produce a string that is suitable as string literal in Python source code
Decoding reverses that encoding:
>>> "\\x69\\x73\\x41\\x72\\x72\\x61\\x79".decode('string_escape')
'isArray'
>>> "\\x63\\x61\\x6C\\x6C".decode('string_escape')
'call'
>>> "\\x74\\x6F\\x53\\x74\\x72\\x69\\x6E\\x67".decode('string_escape')
'toString'
Being a built-in codec, this is a lot faster than using regular expressions:
>>> from timeit import timeit
>>> import re
>>> def unescape(text):
... return re.sub(r'\\x([0-9a-fA-F]{2})',
... lambda m: chr(int(m.group(1), 16)), text)
...
>>> value = "\\x69\\x73\\x41\\x72\\x72\\x61\\x79"
>>> timeit('unescape(value)', 'from __main__ import unescape, value')
6.254786968231201
>>> timeit('value.decode("string_escape")', 'from __main__ import value')
0.43862390518188477
That's about 14 times faster.
EDIT: Please use Martijn's solution. I didn't know the text.decode('string_escape') yet, and of course it is way faster. Below follows my original answer.
Use this regular expression to unescape all escaped hexadecimal expressions within the string:
def unescape(text):
return re.sub(r'\\\\|\\x([0-9a-fA-F]{2})',
lambda m: chr(int(m.group(1), 16)) if m.group(1)
else '\\', text)
If you know that the input will not contain a double backslash followed by an x (e. g. foo bar \\x41 bloh which probably should be interpreted to foo bar \x41 bloh instead of to foo bar \A bloh), then you can simplify this to:
def unescape(text):
return re.sub(r'\\x([0-9a-fA-F]{2})',
lambda m: chr(int(m.group(1), 16)), text)

How can I print unicode without using u'\uXXXX'

I'm trying to make a program to iterate through japanese characters (Python 2.7) and return/yield them in a printable format, but I cannot convert the hexadecimal numbers (3040-309f) into a format that can print the characters. I have found that using u'\u' works, but when I attempt to convert the numbers into that format using unicode('\u3040'), it is different from u'\u3040'. The code explains it better.
>>> s1 = u'\u309d'
>>> s2 = unicode("\u209d")
>>> print type(s1) == type(s2)
True
>>> print s1 == s2
False
>>> print s1, s2
ゝ \u209d
I have tried using UTF-8 and latin-1 for s2 as the second argument, but It does nothing. Also, I found that you can do u'\u{0}'.format(u'3040'), but I cannot make u'3040' in my iterator, and u'\u{0}'.format(unicode('3040') raises an error.
In byte string literals, the \uhhhh escape sequence is not interpreted, so you get a literal 6 characters instead.
Converting that to Unicode only decodes the string as ASCII data, not as a Python escape sequence.
You could decode from the unicode_escape encoding instead:
>>> "\u209d".decode('unicode_escape')
u'\u209d'
>>> print "\u209d".decode('unicode_escape')
₝
There are several downsides to this, however. Any other \ escape sequences also get decoded:
>>> '\\n'
'\\n'
>>> '\\n'.decode('unicode_escape')
u'\n'
so you may have to replace backslashes with doubled backslashes first to come back on top with those literal backslashes retained:
>>> '\\n'.replace('\\', '\\\\').decode('unicode_escape')
u'\\n'
But be very careful that you are not in fact trying to treat JSON data as Python string literals. JSON also uses the same escape sequence format but should instead be treated as JSON; decode with json.loads() instead:
>>> import json
>>> json.loads('"\u209d"')
u'\u209d'

Python3 : unescaping non ascii characters

(Python 3.3.2) I have to unescape some non ASCII escaped characters returned by a call to re.escape(). I see here and here methods that doesn't work. I'm working in a 100% UTF-8 environment.
# pure ASCII string : ok
mystring = "a\n" # expected unescaped string : "a\n"
cod = codecs.getencoder('unicode_escape')
print( cod(mystring) )
# non ASCII string : method #1
mystring = "€\n"
# equivalent to : mystring = codecs.unicode_escape_decode(mystring)
cod = codecs.getdecoder('unicode_escape')
print(cod(mystring))
# RESULT = ('â\x82¬\n', 5) INSTEAD OF ("€\n", 2)
# non ASCII string : method #2
mystring = "€\n"
mystring = bytes(mystring, 'utf-8').decode('unicode_escape')
print(mystring)
# RESULT = â\202¬ INSTEAD OF "€\n"
Is this a bug ? Have I misunderstood something ?
Any help would be appreciated !
PS : I edited my post thanks to the Michael Foukarakis' remark.
I guess the actual string you need to process is mystring = €\\n?
mystring = "€\n" # that's 2 char, "€" and new line
mystring = "€\\n" # that's 3 char, "€", "\" and "n"
I don't really understand what's going wrong within encode() and decode() of python3, but my friend solve this problem when we are writing some tools.
How we did is to bypass the encoder("utf_8") after the escape procedure is done.
>>> "€\\n".encode("utf_8")
b'\xe2\x82\xac\\n'
>>> "€\\n".encode("utf_8").decode("unicode_escape")
'â\x82¬\n'
>>> "€\\n".encode("utf_8").decode("unicode_escape").encode("utf_8")
b'\xc3\xa2\xc2\x82\xc2\xac\n' # we don't want this
>>> bytes([ord(char) for char in "€\\n".encode("utf_8").decode("unicode_escape")])
b'\xe2\x82\xac\n' # what we really need
>>> str(bytes([ord(char) for char in "€\\n".encode("utf_8").decode("unicode_escape")]), "utf_8")
'€\n'
We can see that: though the result of decode("unicode_escape") looks wired, the bytes object actually contain the correct bytes of your strings(with utf-8 encoding), in this case, "\xe2\x82\xac\n"
And we now do not print the str object directly, neither do we use encode("utf_8"), we use ord() to create the bytes object b'\xe2\x82\xac\n'.
And you can get the correct str from this bytes object, just put it into str()
BTW, the tool my friend and me want to make is a wrapper that allow user to input c-like string literal, and convert the escaped sequence automatically.
User input:\n\x61\x62\n\x20\x21 # 20 characters, which present 6 chars semantically
output: # \n
ab # \x61\x62\n
! # \x20\x21
That's a powerful tool for user to input some non-printable character in terminal.
Our final tools is:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys
for line in sys.stdin:
sys.stdout.buffer.write(bytes([ord(char) for char in line[:-1].encode().decode('unicode_escape')]))
sys.stdout.flush()
You seem to misunderstand encodings. To be protected against common errors, we usually encode a string when it leaves our application, and decode it when it comes in.
Firstly, let's look at the documentation for unicode_escape, which states:
Produce[s] a string that is suitable as Unicode literal in Python source code.
Here is what you would get from the network or a file that claims its contents are Unicode escaped:
b'\\u20ac\\n'
Now, you have to decode this to use it in your app:
>>> s = b'\\u20ac\\n'.decode('unicode_escape')
>>> s
'€\n'
and if you wanted to write it back to, say, a Python source file:
with open('/tmp/foo', 'wb') as fh: # binary mode
fh.write(b'print("' + s.encode('unicode_escape') + b'")')
import string
printable = string.printable
printable = printable + '€'
def cod(c):
return c.encode('unicode_escape').decode('ascii')
def unescape(s):
return ''.join(c if ord(c)>=32 and c in printable else cod(c) for c in s)
mystring = "€\n"
print(unescape(mystring))
Unfortunately string.printable only includes ASCII characters. You can make a copy as I did here and extend it with any Unicode characters that you'd like, such as €.

Print confusion

I am new to python when i try to print "\20%" that is
>>>"\20%"
why is the shell printing '\x10%' that is, it is showing
'\x10%'
the same is happening with join also when is do
>>>l = ['test','case']
>>>"\20%".join(l)
it shows
'test\x10%case'
I am using python 2.7.3
'\20' is an octal literal, and the same as chr(2 * 8 + 0) == chr(16).
What the Python shell displays by default is not the output of print, but the representation of the given value, which is the hexadecimal '\x10'.
If you want the string \20%, you have to either escape the backaslash ('\\20%') or use a raw string literal (r'\20%'). Both will be displayed as
>>> r'\20%'
'\\20%'
\20 is an escape sequence that refers to the DLE ASCII character whose decimal value is 16 (20 in octal, 10 in hexadecimal). Such a character is printed as the \x10 hex escape by the repr function of strings.
To specify a literal \20, either double the backslash ("\\20") or use a raw string (r"\20").
Two print "\20%"
what if you print directly:
>>> print '\20%'
% # some symbol not correctly display on this page
and do using r
>>> print r'\20%'
\20%
>>> r'\20%' # what r do.
'\\20%'
>>> print '\\20%'
\20%
>>>
Some time back I had same doubt about string and I asked a question, you may find helpful

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