The introduction of raw string literals will not change the interpretation of the traditional string literal values. This includes their multiline capabilities and how they handle the escape sequences and delimiters. A traditional string can include Unicode escapes (JLS 3.3) or escape sequences (JLS 3.10.6).

A Java class file, that is, the Java bytecode, does not record whether a string constant was created using a traditional string or a raw string. Both traditional and raw string values are stored as instances of the java.lang.String class.