CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonstringunicode
user3477823
user3477823

Reputation:

Unicode list to String list Python 2

I have this list: 

l = [u'\xf9', u'!']

And I want to convert it in this list: 

l2 = ['ù','!']

How can i do it? and Why does l.encode() not work?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 628

Answers (1)

Sylvain Leroux
Sylvain Leroux

Reputation: 52000

Are you using Python 2 ? If it is the case, you might be fooled by the way Python displays strings.

As you noticed, '\xc3\xb9' is the UTF-8 encoded representation of code point U+00F9 ('ù'). So:

# code point
>>> u'ù'
u'\xf9'

# seems wrong ?
>>> u'ù'.encode('utf-8')
'\xc3\xb9'

# No, not at all (at least on my UTF-8 terminal)
>>> print(u'ù'.encode('utf-8'))
ù

Given your example:

>>> l = [u'\xf9', u'!']
>>> print(l)
[u'\xf9', u'!']
>>> l[0]
u'\xf9'
>>> print(l[0])
ù

>>> l2 = [u.encode('utf-8') for u in l]
>>> l2
['\xc3\xb9', '!']
>>> print(l2)
['\xc3\xb9', '!']
>>> print(l2[0])
ù

I agree all of this is rather inconsistent and source of frustration. That's why string/unicode support was a major rewrite in Python 3. There:

# Python 3
>>> l = [u'\xf9', u'!']
>>> l
['ù', '!']

Upvotes: 1

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