Let's make an intentional syntax error...

>>> print "Testing\"
SyntaxError: EOL while scanning single-quoted string


Please focus on the part of the error message that states "while
scanning single-quoted string". How can Python claim it scanned a
single-quoted string when I fed it with a double-quoted string? That is
a quote type recognition bug in Python which should be fixed.

The error message in this case should, however, be:

SyntaxError: EOL while scanning double-quoted string

It seems "single-quoted" doesn't mean the actual quotation sign used but
rather how many you used. Compare the multiline triple quote syntax:

$ cat foo.py
"""bar
$ python foo.py
  File "foo.py", line 3

    ^
SyntaxError: EOF while scanning triple-quoted string

This shouldn't read sextuple-quoted string, should it?

I have e-mailed Guido van Rossum about this. He replied: "Good find.
Please file a bug on bugs.python.org." If that wasn't a bug, he wouldn't
have said that, would he?

This is not a bug in my opinion -- Robert has stated why.

However, since you contacted Guido, let him decide. :)

As the term "single-quoted string" is clearly ambiguous, I propose to
change the error message to just "string" (or perhaps "string literal",
but then you'd have to change the triple-quoted message to
"triple-quoted string literal" too for consistency).

OK, done so in r63068.

It would be better to say

"End of line while scanning string (<string>, line 1)"

and

"End of f... while scanning multi-line string (<string>, line 1)"


These messages really need to be clear, so putting EOF for example
(which I really don't know what it stands for) is really mind-bending.