Why backward slash

Q&A
#1

Screen Link:

My Code: 

email_mentions = titles.str.contains(r"\be[-\s]?mails?\b", flags=re.I).sum()```

What I expected to happen:


What actually happened:

pattern = r"\be[-\s]?mails?\b"
email_mentions = titles.str.contains(pattern, flags=re.I).sum()


<!--My code perfectly works but I don't get why the solution code has another backward slash just after the bracket ([\-\]): -->
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#2

Hi @furkan.demirdoven!

In this case, you’re right because the hyphen has no special meaning in the regex. BUT if there was a regex like [a-z] that would match any letter from a to z , you would escape the hyphen if you wanted your regex to match a , - or z . Hope it helps!

Happy coding:)
Artur

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