Fix the Unicodeescape Error when Specifying a Path in Python

When specifying a file path in Python, you may face the following unicodeescape error if the path contains backslashes:

SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’ codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

In this short guide, you’ll see two ways to overcome this error.

Two ways to fix the unicodeescape error

For example, here we have a simple script to import a CSV file called products:

import pandas as pd

data = pd.read_csv("C:\Users\Ron\Desktop\Test\products.csv")   
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

print(df)

If we run the script in Python, we’ll get the following error:

SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’ codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

To overcome this error, we can place the “r” letter before the path string. This prevents Python from interpreting backslashes as escape sequences:

import pandas as pd

data = pd.read_csv(r"C:\Users\Ron\Desktop\Test\products.csv")   
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

print(df)

If we run the script, the file would be imported correctly.

    product brand  price
0  Computer     A   1200
1    Tablet     B    350
2   Printer     C    120
3   Monitor     D    400
4  Keyboard     E     80

Alternatively, we can use double backslashes in the path for every instance where a single backslash was originally present:

import pandas as pd

data = pd.read_csv("C:\\Users\\Ron\\Desktop\\Test\\products.csv")   
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

print(df)

The result:

    product brand  price
0  Computer     A   1200
1    Tablet     B    350
2   Printer     C    120
3   Monitor     D    400
4  Keyboard     E     80