I think I'm adding the path to an image folder incorrectly in the logic of my discord.py bot - python-3.5

Question

I am trying to get the bot to respond with a randomly selected image from a folder on my pc:
if message.content == "look at this":
imgList = os.listdir("C:\Users\Alien\Desktop\BOTS\TAL\IMAGES")
imgString = random.choice(imgList)
path = "C:\Users\Alien\Desktop\BOTS\TAL\IMAGES" + imgString
await client.send_file(message.channel, path)
This is part of a longer .py file with a lot of different code that all works fine with the necessary intros/outros etc
It ran fine before I added this but now when I try to run it prints:
C:\Users\Alien\PycharmProjects\tal-1.0\venv\Scripts\python.exe C:/Users/Alien/PycharmProjects/tal-1.0/tal-1.0.py
File "C:/Users/Alien/PycharmProjects/tal-1.0/tal-1.0.py", line 27
imgList = os.listdir("C:\Users\Alien\Desktop\BOTS\TAL\IMAGES")
^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape
Process finished with exit code 1

Answer 1

SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape
This is telling you there an escape character error, in position 2-3, which are characters \U
\ is an escape character for strings. It allows you to include things like a single-quote inside a single quote string: var = 'you\'re' will keep the single quote without closing the string.
You're using the escape character \ in your string(, which you're doing because it is part of your filesystem path). So it's trying to decode the next character, U, which it doesn't know how to do since it doesn't need to be escaped.
Instead you need to escape the escape character. You'll need to write \\ in each place that you have \.
Your solution needs something like this in all your paths:
imgList = os.listdir("C:\\Users\\Alien\\Desktop\\BOTS\\TAL\\IMAGES")