[Python-Dev] Why both r'' and R'', u'' and U''?

[Martin v. Loewis]

> > Would it be outrageous to suggest deprecating the last five rows?
> Why bother?  All that does is outdate a bunch of documentation.

He suggested to deprecate it, not to remove it. By the time it is
removed, the documentation still mentioning it should be outdated for
other reasons (e.g. the string module might have disappeared).

In general, the rationale for deprecating things would be that the
simplification will make everybody's life easier in the long run. In
the case of a small change (such as this one), that advantage would be
small. OTOH, the hassle for users that rely on the then-removed
feature will be also small; I see it as quite unlikely that anybody
uses that feature actively (although I do think that people use 0X10
and 100L; the latter is common since 100l is oft confused with 1001).

Regards,
Martin