Why can't Python's raw string literals end with a single backslash?

The reason is explained in the part of that section which I highlighted in bold:

String quotes can be escaped with a backslash, but the backslash remains in the string; for example, r"\"" is a valid string literal consisting of two characters: a backslash and a double quote; r"\" is not a valid string literal (even a raw string cannot end in an odd number of backslashes). Specifically, a raw string cannot end in a single backslash (since the backslash would escape the following quote character). Note also that a single backslash followed by a newline is interpreted as those two characters as part of the string, not as a line continuation.

So raw strings are not 100% raw, there is still some rudimentary backslash-processing.

The whole misconception about python's raw strings is that most of people think that backslash (within a raw string) is just a regular character as all others. It is NOT. The key to understand is this python's tutorial sequence:

When an 'r' or 'R' prefix is present, a character following a backslash is included in the string without change, and all backslashes are left in the string

So any character following a backslash is part of raw string. Once parser enters a raw string (non Unicode one) and encounters a backslash it knows there are 2 characters (a backslash and a char following it).

This way:

r'abc\d' comprises a, b, c, \, d

r'abc\'d' comprises a, b, c, \, ', d

r'abc\'' comprises a, b, c, \, '

and:

r'abc\' comprises a, b, c, \, ' but there is no terminating quote now.

Last case shows that according to documentation now a parser cannot find closing quote as the last quote you see above is part of the string i.e. backslash cannot be last here as it will 'devour' string closing char.

That's the way it is! I see it as one of those small defects in python!

I don't think there's a good reason for it, but it's definitely not parsing; it's really easy to parse raw strings with \ as a last character.

The catch is, if you allow \ to be the last character in a raw string then you won't be able to put " inside a raw string. It seems python went with allowing " instead of allowing \ as the last character.

However, this shouldn't cause any trouble.

If you're worried about not being able to easily write windows folder pathes such as c:\mypath\ then worry not, for, you can represent them as r"C:\mypath", and, if you need to append a subdirectory name, don't do it with string concatenation, for it's not the right way to do it anyway! use os.path.join

>>> import os
>>> os.path.join(r"C:\mypath", "subfolder")
'C:\\mypath\\subfolder'