print unicode characters in python interpreter

Question

I am playing around working with unicode in python. I am not able to print (display) the unicode characters such asé I tried the following:

>>> sys.setdefaultencoding('UTF8')
>>> chr(0xFF)
'\xff'
>>> u = u'abcdé'
>>> len(u)
5
>>> u[4]  
u'\xe9'
>>> str(u[4])
'\xc3\xa9'
>>>

I was expecting u[4] to print é but it prints u'\xe9'. how can I make this work? I am using python 2.7.2 version

Jayanth Koushik · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-19 18:51:07Z

6

When you just type u[4], it shows the repr. To see the unicode character, use print.

print u[4]

answered Feb 19, 2014 at 18:51

Jayanth Koushik

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4 Comments

eagertoLearn Over a year ago

Thanks! that worked, so setting sys.setdefaultencoding('UTF8') is not needed I guess?

Martijn Pieters Over a year ago

@eagertoLearn: No, don't use setdefaultencoding(); that is very rarely a good idea.

eagertoLearn Over a year ago

@MartijnPieters: Thanks, I will not use it. but may I know why is it a bad idea? and whats it purpose then?

Martijn Pieters Over a year ago

@eagertoLearn: It's an internal method used by Python to set the default encoding from the environment, to match your terminal settings. Mostly, people setting it don't understand how automatic encoding and decoding works for Unicode values, and should instead investigate how to avoid the automatic conversions.

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