Here is an example:
d = dict(a = 2)
print d
{'a': 2}
How can I tell dict() constructor to use Unicode instead without writing the string literal expliclity like u'a'? I am loading a dictionary from a json module which defaults to use unicode. I want to make use of unicode from now on.
To get a dict with Unicode keys, use Unicode strings when constructing the dict:
>>> d = {u'a': 2}
>>> d
{u'a': 2}
Dicts created from keyword arguments always have string keys. If you want those to be Unicode (as well as all other strings), switch to Python 3.
dict(). That's using Python keywords, which are always (byte) strings.
Keyword arguments in 2.x can only use ASCII characters, which means bytestrings. Either use a dict literal, or use one of the constructors that allows specifying the full type.
>>> dict(((u'a', 2),))
{u'a': 2}
3>> dict(a=2, あ=3) {'あ': 3, 'a': 2}