What is the difference between the meaning of 0x and \x in Python hex strings?

Question

I'm doing some binary operations which are often shown as hex-es. I have seen both the 0x and \x as prefixes.

In which case is which used?

score 45 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 03 '13 at 18:19

45

0x is used for literal numbers. "\x" is used inside strings to represent a character

>>> 0x41
65
>>> "\x41"
'A'

>>> "\x01" # a non printable character
'\x01'

answered Jun 03 '13 at 18:19

John La Rooy

@mgilson, for output they are used for non-printing characters. But they can represent any character in a literal string. – John La Rooy Jun 03 '13 at 18:21
So the `"\x"` notation isn't in any way connected with hex numbers? – TheMeaningfulEngineer Jun 03 '13 at 18:29
1

@Alan, the 2 digits following the \x are hex. so `"\x41" == chr(65)` – John La Rooy Jun 03 '13 at 18:31
So the "\x" notation, in case of a non printable character, shows one byte of raw binary data in form of two hex numbers? – TheMeaningfulEngineer Jun 03 '13 at 18:36
0x are hexadecimal (base 16) – Nicolas S.Xu May 17 '19 at 19:39

score -3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 26 '15 at 06:29

-3

0x follows number, means HEX number

\x follows number, means HEX ascii characters

check it here: ascii table

answered Jan 26 '15 at 06:29

Euler

2 Answers2