Assign expression to a variable and execute it

Question

I would like to assign the following expression to a variable:

textFormat = 'soup.find("div", {"class" : "article-entry text"}).text.replace(\'\n\', "")'

I am calling this code in another file using

text = exec(textFormat)

Sadly I get the error message:

   File "C:\Users\dadsad\documents\coding\dasdasd\functions.py", line 42, in loadAtom
    text = exec(textFormat)   File "<string>", line 1
    soup.find("div", {"class" : "article-entry text"}).text.replace('
                                                                    ^ SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal

Any ideas? Thanks! :)

Edit: Tried the suggestion, getting a None:

If you print(textFormat) and actually look at the value you assigned, you'll have a pretty good idea yourself. — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 17:20
The new line is interpreted and not passed to exec. That being said, exec and eval are antipatterns. — willeM_ Van Onsem
– willeM_ Van Onsem, Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 17:20
Yes, exec() always returns None. Perhaps you meant to use eval() instead? — Robᵩ
– Robᵩ, Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 18:08

wjandrea · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-27 18:11:10Z

5

I suspect you are suffering from backslashitis. You need one more slash before the n:

textFormat = 'soup.find("div", {"class" : "article-entry text"}).text.replace(\'\\n\', "")'

But, instead of execing code this way, you might want expose a subroutine instead:

def textFormat(soup):
    return soup.find("div", {"class" : "article-entry text"}).text.replace('\n', "")

edited Nov 27, 2017 at 18:11

wjandrea

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answered Nov 27, 2017 at 17:20

Robᵩ

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1 Comment

rStorms Over a year ago

Tried your solution and added a screenshot. Still getting an error --> None

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