Fails with passwords that use the backslash character

[awfki]

In the YAML file there doesn't appear to be a way to include a password with a backslash ().

My current password is not "pass\word" but that's close enough for testing. I tried various combinations of quotes and \ in YAML file and none of them work properly.

• Using password: pass\word (no quotes, one slash) results in the password being "pass\word" with two backslashes in it.

• Using password: "pass\word" (double quotes, one slash) results in an error with a lot of output ending with:

File "/Users/dnoonan/.pyenv/versions/3.5.2/lib/python3.5/site-packages/yaml/scanner.py", line 1220, in scan_flow_scalar_non_spaces
    "found unknown escape character %r" % ch, self.get_mark())
yaml.scanner.ScannerError: while scanning a double-quoted scalar
  in ".netmiko.yml", line 6, column 13
found unknown escape character 'w'
  in ".netmiko.yml", line 6, column 19

• Using password: "pass\\word" (double quotes, two slashes) results in the password being "pass\word" with two backslashes in it.

• Using password: 'pass\word' (single quotes, one slash) results in the password being "pass\word" with two backslashes in it.

• Using password: 'pass\\word' (single quotes, two slashes) results in the password being "pass\\word" with four backslashes in it.

Additionally it doesn't fail cleanly, that is, there's no error message or timeout. The SSH fails (%%%failed%%% in the tmp file) with no error message and the call to proc.communicate() (line 48 of netmiko-grep) never returns. When I hit control-c it gives this message:

^CTraceback (most recent call last):
  File "./netmiko-grep", line 218, in <module>
    sys.exit(main(sys.argv[1:]))
  File "./netmiko-grep", line 201, in main
    grepx(my_files, pattern, grep_options)
  File "./netmiko-grep", line 68, in grepx
    proc.communicate()
  File "/Users/dnoonan/.pyenv/versions/3.5.2/lib/python3.5/subprocess.py", line 1064, in communicate
    self.wait()
  File "/Users/dnoonan/.pyenv/versions/3.5.2/lib/python3.5/subprocess.py", line 1658, in wait
    (pid, sts) = self._try_wait(0)
  File "/Users/dnoonan/.pyenv/versions/3.5.2/lib/python3.5/subprocess.py", line 1608, in _try_wait
    (pid, sts) = os.waitpid(self.pid, wait_flags)
KeyboardInterrupt

If I insert return 0 at line 48 (in netmiko-grep) right before proc.communicate() then the script finishes with this output:

--------------------
Failed devices:
  PCM-US1P

~/github/netmiko_tools/netmiko_tools $ grep: (standard input): Input/output error

[ktbyers]

@awfki This should work in the YAML file (I just tested it).

password: 'pass\word'

In your comment above, you are probably misinterpreting Python's internal storage of it (i.e. internally Python will store this as 'pass\word' as it has to backslash escape the backslash. To verify it properly do a

print password

and look at it on the screen.

>>> a = r'pass\word'
>>> print a
pass\word
>>> a
'pass\\word'