Solve - (unicode error) codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape

In this tutorial, we are going to learn about how to solve the SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’ codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape in python.

Here is an example how the error occurs:

import csv

car = open("C:\Users\sai\Documents\cars.txt")
result = csv.reader(car)
print(result)

In the code above, the backslash character ” in the path will cause this syntax error.

To solve this error, add an r before the path, e.g. r”C:\Users\sai\Documents\cars.txt”. This will make sure that the backslash is properly escaped in the file path.

Here is an example:

import csv

car = open(r"C:\Users\sai\Documents\cars.txt")
result = csv.reader(car)
print(result)

The backslash character \ is a special symbol in python that is used to escape a character.

Similarly, we can also solve this error by adding one more backslash to the path \\.

import csv

car = open("C:\\Users\\sai\\Documents\\cars.txt")
result = csv.reader(car)
print(result)