I have the following line of ascii encoded data in a file:
!!0 !@ ( (0#=*XM8; $ ! % 3 @"6T-O;G1E;G1?5'EP97-=

Which has a length of 56 as a bytes object.

But, when I read in this file as bytes and strip any r or n, it has two extra backslashes: b'!!0 !@ ( (0#=*XM8; $ ! % 3 @"6T-O;G1E;G1?5\'EP97-= and has a length of 57.

Thus, I am wondering if there is a way to read in a line of ascii encoded data and be able to run calculations on the actual data in the file rather than a slightly different version.