python - How to escape special characters of a string with single backslashes

Question

I'm trying to escape the characters -]^$*. each with a single backslash .

For example the string: ^stack.*/overflow$arr=1 will become:

^stack.*/overflo\w$arr=1

What's the most efficient way to do that in Python?

re.escape double escapes which isn't what I want:

'\^stack\.\*\/overflow\$arr\=1'

I need this to escape for something else (nginx).

Answer 1

This is one way to do it (in Python 3.x):

escaped = a_string.translate(str.maketrans({"-":  r"-",
                                          "]":  r"]",
                                          "": r"",
                                          "^":  r"^",
                                          "$":  r"$",
                                          "*":  r"*",
                                          ".":  r"."}))

For reference, for escaping strings to use in regex:

import re
escaped = re.escape(a_string)