Invalid escape sequence

Reports invalid escape sequences in string and bytes literals.

Starting from Python 3.6, escape sequences that are not recognized (such as \.) produce a SyntaxWarning. In future Python versions, they will become a SyntaxError.

To fix this, you can either escape the backslash (e.g., \\.) or use a raw string (e.g., r'\.').

Example:

# Warning: Invalid escape sequence '\.'
print('\.')

# Correct
print(r'\.')
print('\\.')

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

PyInvalidEscapeSequence

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Python

Inspection ID: PyInvalidEscapeSequenceInspection

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection PyInvalidEscapeSequence

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	CLion 2026.1, DataSpell 2026.1, IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1, PyCharm 2026.1, Qodana for JVM 2026.1,

Last modified: 31 March 2026