Seems like a really simple question and it's not clear what the correct answer is here. We understand that backslashes are a special delimiter in JSON. From our database we're being returned a field with a backslash in it. It has to be a single backslash for contractual/legal/government representation reasons. Yet, it seems to be impossible to return just a single backslash. Wondering if this is a rule from JSON? It might be, but 3 of us for spending a day searching can't find out what's going on here. Here is the FastAPI app: from fastapi import FastAPI app = FastAPI() @app.get("/") async def root(): return { "backslash_1": " \ ", "backslash_2": " \\ ", "backslash_3": " \\\ ", "backslash_4": " \\\\ ", "backslash_5": " \\\\\ ", "backslash_6": " \\\\\\ ", } Here's the JSON response: { "backslash_1":" \\ ", <-- there are 2 "backslash_2":" \\ ", "backslash_3":" \\\\ ", <-- there are 4 "backslash_4":" \\\\ ", "backslash_5":" \\\\\\ ", <-- there are 6 "backslash_6":" \\\\\\ " } We're not talking about python r'' or repr() or print, we talking about JSON body response from an API. This question strictly relates to API JSON bodies, so these other SO questions aren't useful here: Why do backslashes appear twice? How to replace a double backslash with a single backslash in python? How to get rid of double backslash in python windows file path string? python replace single backslash with double backslash Manage double backslashes added automatically by JSON in python We've tried all these but this is not really helpful for our API client users, as they're seeing JSON property value string returned as "ref\\\\official", which is an erroneous response, because the official string should be "ref\official". The actual advice on whether it's possible or not to return a single slash would be really helpful. Continue reading...
