using backslash in python (not to escape)

To answer your question directly, put r in front of the string.

final= path + r'\xulrunner.exe ' + path + r'\application.ini'

But a better solution would be os.path.join:

final = os.path.join(path, 'xulrunner.exe') + ' ' + \         os.path.join(path, 'application.ini')

(the backslash there is escaping a newline, but you could put the whole thing on one line if you want)

I will mention that you can use forward slashes in file paths, and Python will automatically convert them to the correct separator (backslash on Windows) as necessary. So

final = path + '/xulrunner.exe ' + path + '/application.ini'

should work. But it's still preferable to use os.path.join because that makes it clear what you're trying to do.

You can escape the slash. Use \\ and you get just one slash.

You can escape the backslash with another backslash (\\), but it won’t look nicer. To solve that, put an r in front of The string to signal a raw string. A raw string will ignore literally everything , which is a bad thing if you also want colored text, and really bad if your string contains some quotes like this:

a_and_b = r”Alice’s friend is Bob. He always says, \“howdy\” ”

In this case, python will throw a SyntaxError...

If you haven’t figured out how to solve it, here it is:

a_and_b = r”””Alice’s friend is Bob. He always says, \“howdy\” ”””In here, we use a multiline string. And if the string has 3 quotes in a row, then that’s easy. Put a space between them and it’s solved:

three_quotes = ’’’ Here are 3 single quotes: ‘ ‘ ‘ ’’’