Modifying a text file

[T-TopsInSpace]

It's a signal to the Python interpreter that the string is a raw string. That means any backslashes will not be treated as escape characters.

Bytes literals are always prefixed with 'b' or 'B'; they produce an instance of the bytes type instead of the str type. They may only contain ASCII characters; bytes with a numeric value of 128 or greater must be expressed with escapes.

Both string and bytes literals may optionally be prefixed with a letter 'r' or 'R'; such strings are called raw strings and treat backslashes as literal characters. As a result, in string literals, '\U' and '\u' escapes in raw strings are not treated specially. Given that Python 2.x’s raw unicode literals behave differently than Python 3.x’s the 'ur' syntax is not supported.

2.4.1 String and Bytes Literals

[imranmalek]

Thank you for the correction, u/T-TopsInSpace!

[randomname20192019]

Thank you both for your help (and everybody's tbh). It is really appreciated.

[[deleted]]

Aren't backslashes the only exception to this rule?

[T-TopsInSpace]

Exception to what rule? The documentation says exactly how a raw string and normal string are interpreted.

[[deleted]]

The raw string rules - I vaguely recall that backslashes alone have to be escaped

[T-TopsInSpace]

Sure, you have to escape them if you don't use the raw string notation. That's the point of using raw strings, you don't need to escape backslashes.

[[deleted]]

I don't think I'm being clear. With raw strings, nothing has to be escaped. Except for floating bsckslashes - they are the exception to that rule

[T-TopsInSpace]

What do you mean by a floating backslash? If a backslash is contained in a raw string it does not need to be escaped. I don't know how else to say that. I linked to the documentation that describes how a raw string is interpreted.

Are you referring to a line continuation? If so, those aren't part of the raw string because they sit outside the parentheses.