What does the “r” in pythons re.compile(r' pattern flags') mean?

Question

I am reading through http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html. According to this the \"r\" in pythons re.compile(r\' pattern flags\') refers the raw string

Answer 1

No. Not everything in regex syntax needs to be preceded by \, so ., *, +, etc still have special meaning in a pattern

The r'' is often used as a convenience for regex that do need a lot of \ as it prevents the clutter of doubling up the \