What exactly do “u” and “r” string prefixes do, and what are raw string literals?
While asking this question, I realized I didn’t know much about raw strings. For somebody claiming to be a Django trainer, this sucks.
rawstring
Why can’t Python’s raw string literals end with a single backslash?
Technically, any odd number of backslashes, as described in the documentation.
What exactly is a “raw string regex” and how can you use it?
From the python documentation on regex, regarding the '' character:
What does preceding a string literal with “r” mean?
When an 'r' or 'R' prefix is present,
a character following a backslash is
included in the string without change,
and all backslashes are left in the
string. For example, the string
literal r"n" consists of two
characters: a backslash and a
lowercase 'n'. String quotes can be
escaped with a backslash, but the
backslash remains in the string; for
example, r""" is a valid string
literal consisting of two characters:
a backslash and a double quote; r""
is not a valid string literal (even a
raw string cannot end in an odd number
of backslashes). Specifically, a raw
string cannot end in a single
backslash (since the backslash would
escape the following quote character).
Note also that a single backslash
followed by a newline is interpreted
as those two characters as part of the
string, not as a line continuation.
Python Regex escape operator in substitutions & raw strings
I don’t understand the logic in the functioning of the scape operator in python regex together with r’ of raw strings.
Some help is appreciated.
Why can’t I end a raw string with a backslash?
First the tokenizer looks for the closing quote. It recognizes backslashes when it does this, but doesn’t interpret them – it just looks for a sequence of string elements followed by the closing quote mark, where “string elements” are either (a character that’s not a backslash, closing quote or a newline – except newlines are allowed in triple-quotes), or (a backslash, followed by any single character).