How does one print a Unicode character code in Python?

Question

I would like to print a unicode's character code, and not the actual glyph it represents in Python.

For example, if u is a list of unicode characters:

>>> u[0]
u'\u0103'
>>> print u[0]
ă

I would like to output the character code as a raw string: u'\u0103'.

I have tried to just print it to a file, but this doesn't work without encoding it in UTF-8.

>>> w = open('~/foo.txt', 'w')
>>> print>>w, u[0].decode('utf-8')

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#33>", line 1, in <module>
    print>>w, u[0].decode('utf-8')
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/encodings/utf_8.py", line 16, in decode
    return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, True)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u0103' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
>>> print>>w, u[0].encode('utf-8')
>>> w.close()

Encoding it results in the glyph ă being written to the file.

How can I write the character code?

Jacob Bridges · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-12 02:35:01Z

22

For printing raw unicode data one only need specify the correct encoding:

>>> s = u'\u0103'
>>> print s.encode('raw_unicode_escape')
\u0103

answered Dec 12, 2014 at 2:35

Jacob Bridges

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