Python - handling windows path with '\' characters

I’ve been using this for the past months:

import os

import re

def slashPath(path):

    """

    param: str file path

    return: str file path with "\\" replaced by '/' 

    """

    path = rawString(path)

    raw_path = r"{}".format(path)

    separator = os.path.normpath("/")

    changeSlash = lambda x: '/'.join(x.split(separator))

    if raw_path.startswith('\\'):

        return '/' + changeSlash(raw_path)

    else:

        return changeSlash(raw_path)

def rawString(strVar):

    """Returns a raw string representation of strVar.

    Will replace '\\' with '/'

    :param: str String to change to raw

    """

    if type(strVar) is str:

        strVarRaw = r'%s' % strVar

        new_string=''

        escape_dict={'\a':r'\a', '\b':r'\b', '\c':r'\c', '\f':r'\f', '\n':r'\n',

                    '\r':r'\r', '\t':r'\t', '\v':r'\v', '\'':r'\'', '\"':r'\"',

                    '\0':r'\0', '\1':r'\1', '\2':r'\2', '\3':r'\3', '\4':r'\4',

                    '\5':r'\5', '\6':r'\6', '\7':r'\7', '\8':r'\8', '\9':r'\9'}

        for char in strVarRaw:

            try: new_string+=escape_dict[char]

            except KeyError: new_string+=char

        return new_string

    else:

        return strVar

slashPath(path) will always give a path with ‘/’ as sep.