What does \v and \r mean? Are they white spaces?

\' Single quote (')
\" Double quote (")
\a ASCII Bell (BEL)
\b ASCII Backspace (BS)
\f ASCII Formfeed (FF)
\n ASCII Linefeed (LF)
\N{name} Character named name in the Unicode database (Unicode only)
\r ASCII Carriage Return (CR)
\t ASCII Horizontal Tab (TAB)
\uxxxx Character with 16-bit hex value xxxx (Unicode only) (1) \Uxxxxxxxx Character with 32-bit hex value xxxxxxxx (Unicode only) (2)
\v ASCII Vertical Tab (VT)

\t is a horizontal tab, \v is a vertical tab and \r is a carriage return.

They are certainly a sub-set of white space characters.