Python SyntaxError: 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes: Fixing Truncated Unicode Escapes

This error occurs when a backslash is used in a string literal as an escape character, but the backslash itself is not properly escaped. For example, if you have a string like this:

path = 'C:\Users\John\Desktop'

Python will interpret the '\U' in 'Users' as the start of a Unicode escape sequence, resulting in the error you described.

To fix this, you can use a raw string by adding an 'r' before the opening quote:

path = r'C:\Users\John\Desktop'

This will tell Python to treat the backslashes as literal characters, rather than escape characters.