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

It's Unicode.

Just put the variable between str(), and it will work fine.

But in case you have two lists like the following:

a = ['co32','co36']
b = [u'co32',u'co36']

If you check set(a)==set(b), it will come as False, but if you do as follows:

b = str(b)
set(a)==set(b)

Now, the result will be True.