What's the u prefix in a Python string?

Question

Like in:

u\'Hello\'

My guess is that it indicates \"Unicode\", is it correct?

If so, since when is it available?

Answer 1

The u in u'Some String' means that your string is a Unicode string.

Q: I'm in a terrible, awful hurry and I landed here from Google Search. I'm trying to write this data to a file, I'm getting an error, and I need the dead simplest, probably flawed, solution this second.

A: You should really read Joel's Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) essay on character sets.

Q: sry no time code pls

A: Fine. try str('Some String') or 'Some String'.encode('ascii', 'ignore'). But you should really read some of the answers and discussion on Converting a Unicode string and this excellent, excellent, primer on character encoding.