In python 3 what is the difference between re.search(r'pattern, string') and re.search(b'pattern, string)

Question

In python 3 what is the difference between re.search(r'pattern, string') and re.search(b'pattern, string)

I would be interested if someone would kindly point me to where this is documented.

Answer 1

r'pattern' will look into a "raw" string, which if you have backslash, it will not interpret it as an escape character.

b'pattern' will look into a "byte" string, which is a string that is encoded.

So re.search will do the same for both, but in r'' it will analyze a raw string and in b'' it will analyze bytes.

Edit: here is the documentation on it -> Lexical Analysis

Answer 2

r'pattern' is a stringliteral while b'pattern' is a bytesliteral