[edflsafoiewq]

Yes it does, because normal strings aren't just a special case of raw strings when the number of #s is 0. The presence of #s change the string syntax. Otherwise you could as well say Python has one syntax, with optional f and r prefixes.

[boxed]

No, you can't. Because r/f changes and/or adds escape sequences, AND you can't have double-raw strings for example. In Swift there's 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc number of #. It's not raw strings at all! There's no -1 number of #. So for example to do regexes in python you normally use r-strings, to avoid \ escaping in the regex. In Swift you could do the same the opposite way: not by removing \ escaping, but by changing it to \#. And if you want to regex match for \#, you can do ##. And if you want to match for \## you can use ###, etc.

There is always a clean escape where you can write the literal that you want to write. Unlike in Python where there is no escape (amusingly).

[edflsafoiewq]

Ah, I see. That is better.

[boxed]

Yea, it's a super nice system. It's such a pity that most language designers don't look at other languages before implementing stuff.

I tried to warn the D guys not to make this exact mistake, but they didn't listen :/