Basic Python encoding

Question

I have a file which is simple:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

a = u'Alegría'
print a
print {'a': a}

The output is:

Alegría
{'a': u'Alegr\xeda'}

Why I am getting that instead of:

Alegría
{'a': u'Alegría'}

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

dict's string representation calls repr on keys and values, and repr tries its best to make a string representation that you can paste in any file or interpreter, with or with an encoding declared, and get the object back.

Your string is fine, it's just a safe representation.