Need of using 'r' before path-name while reading a csv file with pandas

Question

a newbie here. Could someone tell me why do we use an \'r\' in some cases before the path name in the following function?:

df = pd.read_csv(r\"Path_name\")
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Answer 1

A raw string will handle back slashes in most cases, such as these two examples:

In [11]:
r'c:\path'

Out[11]:
'c:\\path'

However, if there is a trailing slash then it will break:

In [12]:
r'c:\path\'

  File "", line 1
    r'c:\path\'
               ^
SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal

Forward slashes doesn't have this problem:

In [13]:
r'c:/path/'

Out[13]:
'c:/path/'

The safe and portable method is to use forward slashes always and if building a string for a full path to use os.path to correctly handle building a path that will work when the code is executed on different operating systems:

In [14]:
import os
path = 'c:/'
folder = 'path/'
os.path.join(path, folder)

Out[14]:
'c:/path/'