The Python reference manual includes several string literals that can be used in a string. These special sequences of characters are replaced by the intended meaning of the escape sequence.

Here is a table of some of the more useful escape sequences and a description of the output from them.

Escape Sequence       Meaning
\t                    Tab
\\                    Inserts a back slash (\)
\'                    Inserts a single quote (')
\"                    Inserts a double quote (")
\n                    Inserts a ASCII Linefeed (a new line)

Basic Example

If i wanted to print some data points separated by a tab space I could print this string.

DataString = "0\t12\t24"
print (DataString)

Returns

0    12    24

Example for Lists

Here is another example where we are printing the items of list and we want to sperate the items by a TAB.

DataPoints = [0,12,24]
print (str(DataPoints[0]) + "\t" + str(DataPoints[1]) + "\t" + str(DataPoints[2]))

Returns

0    12    24

Raw Strings

Note that raw strings (a string which include a prefix "r"), string literals will be ignored. This allows these special sequences of characters to be included in strings without being changed.

DataString = r"0\t12\t24"
print (DataString)

Returns

0\t12\t24

Which maybe an undesired output

String Lengths

It should also be noted that string literals are only one character in length.

DataString = "0\t12\t24"
print (len(DataString))

Returns

7

The raw string has a length of 9.

Python's print feature does not convert tabs to spaces - it outputs a literal tab. The way it appears depends on what program you use to view it.

Using str.join:

print '\t'.join(map(str, (1, "hello", 2, "fart")))

The style guide says:

Spaces are the preferred indentation method

because there can be a problem if you mix tab and space characters. Different editors/IDEs can interpret a mixture of tabs and spaces in different ways, leading to different indentations. I personally have seen a recent case where a user was getting an indentation error from python but the editor he was using showed good code. Using another editor or simply listing the code on the screen showed the bad indentation.

The cause of this difference in interpretation probably goes back to when computers took over from typewriters, but the result is we have different bits of software interpreting mixed tabs and spaces in different ways. The simplest way out of the problem is to not mix tabs and spaces. So use an editor that inserts the correct number of spaces when you press the TAB key, deletes the expected number of spaces when you press the DEL key, and NEVER writes a TAB character ('\t') to your source file on disk.