CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonutf-8decodebackslash
alexander
alexander

Reputation: 73

Replacing = with '\x' and then decoding in python

I fetched the subject of an email message using python modules and received string 

'=D8=B3=D9=84=D8=A7=D9=85_=DA=A9=D8=AC=D8=A7=D8=A6=DB=8C?='

I know the string is encoded in 'utf-8'. Python has a method called on strings to decode such strings. But to use the method I needed to replace = sign with \x string. By manual interchange and then printing the decoded resulting string, I get the string سلام_کجائی which is exactly what I want. The question is how I can do the interchange automatically? The answer seems harder than just simple usage of functions on strings like replace function.

Below I brought the code I used after manual operation?

r='\xD8\xB3\xD9\x84\xD8\xA7\xD9\x85_\xDA\xA9\xD8\xAC\xD8\xA7\xD8\xA6\xDB\x8C'
print r.decode('utf-8')

I would appreciate any workable idea.

Upvotes: 7

Views: 9666

Answers (3)

crifan
crifan

Reputation: 14328

for Python 3, decode \x like string, use b prefix:

>>> b"\xe4\xb8\x8b\xe4\xb8\x80\xe6\xad\xa5".decode("utf-8")
'下一步'

Upvotes: 0

Pavel Anossov
Pavel Anossov

Reputation: 62928

Just decode it from quoted-printable to get utf8-encoded bytestring:

In [35]: s = '=D8=B3=D9=84=D8=A7=D9=85_=DA=A9=D8=AC=D8=A7=D8=A6=DB=8C?='
In [36]: s.decode('quoted-printable')
Out[36]: '\xd8\xb3\xd9\x84\xd8\xa7\xd9\x85_\xda\xa9\xd8\xac\xd8\xa7\xd8\xa6\xdb\x8c?'

Then, if needed, from utf-8 to unicode:

In [37]: s.decode('quoted-printable').decode('utf8')
Out[37]: u'\u0633\u0644\u0627\u0645_\u06a9\u062c\u0627\u0626\u06cc?'

 

In [39]: print s.decode('quoted-printable')
سلام_کجائی?

Upvotes: 8

svk
svk

Reputation: 5919

This sort of encoding is known as quoted-printable. There is a Python module for performing encoding and decoding.

You're right that it's just a pure quoting of binary strings, so you need to apply UTF-8 decoding afterwards. (Assuming the string is in UTF-8, of course. But that looks correct although I don't know the language.)

import quopri

print quopri.decodestring( "'=D8=B3=D9=84=D8=A7=D9=85_=DA=A9=D8=AC=D8=A7=D8=A6=DB=8C?='" ).decode( "utf-8" )

Upvotes: 4

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