Inconsistent handling of invalid escape sequences

[Martin Eden]

Invalid characters after backslash are accepted in Lua command-line
interpreter but rejected when compiling code:

  Lua 5.5.1  Copyright (C) 1994-2026 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
  > print('\\c')
  \c
  > load('print("\\c")')
  nil [string "print("\c")"]:1: invalid escape sequence near '"\c'

Is there official policy for them?

-- Martin

[Martin Eden]

Sorry for noise. My bad.

On 2026-08-08 14:09, 'Martin Eden' via lua-l wrote:
>   > print('\\c')

Should be

  > print('\c')
  stdin:1: invalid escape sequence near ''\c'

Which give expected error.

-- Martin

[Spar]

You need to escape twice.

In the command line it interpreted as you type, but in load you wrapped string into a string. You need to escape the escape in order to preserve it in parsing.

 

"\\c" -> \c

'"\\c"' -> "\c"

'"\\\\c"' -> "\\c" -> \c

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