Simple syntax question

[Erik Max Francis]

combe wrote:

> I'm reading the "Programming Python" bible and I often find the
> following
> syntax :
> 
> MyVar = r'some strig data'
> 
> I can't see what the "r" stands for.

It indicates a "raw" string literal.  In raw string literals, escape
sequences aren't processed, so a backslash has no special meaning there:

>>> '\n' # this is a newline
'\n'
>>> '\\n' # this is a backslash and an n
'\\n'
>>> r'\n' # this is a backslash and an n, too
'\\n'

They're useful for when you want to build a string that contains a lot
of backslashes, such as in regular expression strings.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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