SyntaxError: unexpected character after line continuation character

[Saka]

Hello all, and I'm a new member here .
I made a esoteric version of Python for fun, but I'm having some problems when running multiline code with the \n and \t characters. Here is the program that runs the code:

#QwertyPy
def decode(string):
    re = ""
    slist = string.split("_")
    for i in range(0,len(slist)):
        if slist[i][0] in "0123456789":
            if int(slist[i]) > 92:
                re = re + " "
            else:
                re = re + char[int(slist[i])]
        elif slist[i] not in char:
            re = re + slist[i]
    return re
char = "qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmQWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM0123456789~!@#$%^&*()_+-=[]{}\|;:,./<>? "
code = raw_input()
c = (decode(code))
exec(c)

Basically, it is Python but every character is mapped to the string "char" as seen above. Not sure how to explain this though. For example, a simple "Hello World!" program looks like this:
9_3_7_24_4_71_"_41_2_18_18_8_94_27_8_3_18_12_63_"_72
It separates the string by the "_" character, and gets the nth char in the char string. For example, the number "9" corresponds to the letter "p" in the char string, the number 3 to "r", and so on, and characters that aren't numbers are unchanged.

But I have trouble when entering this, which is an infinite counter:
7_103_76_123_52_81_24_1_15_7_18_2_147_30_3_6_2_84_81_24_81_4_9_3_7_24_4_71_7_72_81_24_81_4_7_138_74_76_113_53
Which corresponds to the normal Python:

i = 0
while True:
   print(i)
   i += 1

But for some reason it gives the following error:

Error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\sakaf\Documents\Saka\scripts\Not Golly\qwertypy.py", line 17, in <module>
    exec(c)
  File "<string>", line 1
    i = 0\nwhile True:\n\tprint(i)\n\ti += 1
                                           ^
SyntaxError: unexpected character after line continuation character

Strangely enough, when I paste i = 0\nwhile True:\n\tprint(i)\n\ti += 1 and run it using exec() in the python shell, it runs fine. So why is this happening?

Thanks

[hbknjr]

That's some fun script.

To understand the problem you should print variable c.You'll see that i = 0\nwhile True:\n\tprint(i)\n\ti += 1 is printed which implies that the backslash has already been escaped. So your real string actually is i = 0\\nwhile True:\\n\\tprint(i)\\n\\ti += 1.

To solve the problem convert string to bytes and decode with unicode-escape

c = (decode(code))
c = c.encode('ascii').decode('unicode-escape')
exec(c)

More on problem:

>>> a = 'hello \nThis is newline \n\tThis is horizontal tab'
>>> print(a)
hello
This is newline
        This is horizontal tab
>>> a = 'hello \\nThis is not a newline \\n\\tThis is not a horizontal tab'
>>> print(a)
hello \nThis is not a newline \n\tThis is not a horizontal tab

[Saka]

...
To solve the problem convert string to bytes and decode with unicode-escape
...

Thank you so much! Now it works great and I can run pretty much any piece of python code in this obscure language. Thanks!