Your documentation is poor at best.

[lam2015@…]

Here is how you do it:

URLS:

from django.conf.urls import patterns, url

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^articles/(\d{4})/$', 'news.views.year_archive'),
    url(r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/$', 'news.views.month_archive'),
    url(r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/(\d+)/$', 'news.views.article_detail'),
)

You go line by line and say r = raw. This means no escape characters, the compiler processes what it sees.
Next: ^ from Regular expressions means the beginning of the line beginning with the word articles?
The slash is:
Then you put parenthesis because?: GET IT?
then there is another slash

AND SO ON!!!! ONE STEP at a time

THIS IS HOW YOU EXPLAIN THINGS. Make believe the person reading it doesnt know anything about Regular expressions. These are not standard Regex.. not like Perl

[Marc Tamlyn]

The tutorial aims to strike a balance between newbie developers and new to django developers. It is explicitly not a *python* tutorial, and a detailed analysis of the structure of a python regex is not helpful in this context.

The current version of the docs has a number of links for understanding regexes better already. ​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/intro/tutorial03/#url-argument-regex