Fix SyntaxWarning for invalid escape sequence in Python 3.6+

[jsell-rh]

Closes #2268

Problem

When using apache-age-python with Python 3.6+, a SyntaxWarning is raised:

SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\s'
  WHITESPACE = re.compile('\s')

This warning occurs because \s is not a valid Python string escape sequence. While it currently works (Python interprets unrecognized escape sequences as literal backslash + character), this behavior is deprecated.

Solution

Use a raw string literal (r'\s') to properly declare the regex pattern. Raw strings treat backslashes as literal characters, which is the correct way to define regex patterns in Python.

Changes

File: age/age.py

• Line 28: Changed WHITESPACE = re.compile('\s') to WHITESPACE = re.compile(r'\s')

Testing

• ✅ Existing functionality unchanged (regex pattern behaves identically)
• ✅ Warning eliminated when running with Python 3.12+
• ✅ Forward compatible with Python 3.14+

References

• PEP 701 - Python 3.12 enhanced error messages
• Python Docs: String Literals
• Why does Python log a DeprecationWarning saying "invalid escape sequence"?
• bpo-27364 - Python 3.6 deprecation of invalid escape sequences

---

Diff:

-WHITESPACE = re.compile('\s')
+WHITESPACE = re.compile(r'\s')

[MuhammadTahaNaveed]

@jsell-rh Thank you for the fix.