raw input function in Python

Question

What is the raw_input function? Is it a user interface? When do we use it?

Answer 1

It shows the user a prompt (the optional arg of raw input([arg]) and takes input from the user before returning the data in a string.

name = raw_input("What is your name? ")
print "Hello, %s." % name

This differs from input() in that the latter attempts to comprehend the user's input; it is usually preferable to use raw input() and custom parsing/conversion code instead of input().