Why Do I Get a Syntaxerror for a Unicode Escape in My File Path

Unicode Error unicodeescape codec can't decode bytes... Cannot open text files in Python 3

The problem is with the string

"C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\beeline.txt"

Here, \U in "C:\Users... starts an eight-character Unicode escape, such as \U00014321. In your code, the escape is followed by the character 's', which is invalid.

You either need to duplicate all backslashes:

"C:\\Users\\Eric\\Desktop\\beeline.txt"

Or prefix the string with r (to produce a raw string):

r"C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\beeline.txt"

Address error: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode

In Python strings, the backslash "\" is a special character, also called the "escape" character. It is used in representing certain whitespace characters: "\t" is a tab, "\n" is a newline, and "\r" is a carriage return.

I believe the error is referencing your adress, specifically the special character "\" in it. You cannot use "\" in your string as it will escape the string. You could try using "\\" in your address, I think this should work.

Please see here for futher reading on the subject: http://www.pitt.edu/~naraehan/python2/tutorial7.html

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