What does r mean before a Regex pattern

Question

I found the following regex substitution example from the manual for Regex. I'm a little bit unclear as to what the prefix r does before the string?

re.sub(r'def\s+

([a-zA-Z ][a-zA-Z 0-9]*)\s*\(\s*\):',

... r'static PyObject*\npy_\1(void)\n{',

... 'def myfunc():')

Answer 1

Since the string is to be treated as a raw string (r), any escape codes will be disregarded.

The Python documentation specifically states:

It is optional to precede string literals with the letter "r" or "R"; these strings are known as raw strings and employ alternative methods for interpreting backslash escape sequences.

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