How do I reverse Unicode decomposition using Python?

Question

Using Python 2.5, I have some text in stored in a unicode object:

Dinis e Isabel, uma difı´cil relac¸a˜o conjugal e polı´tica

Answer 1

Unfortunately it seems I actually have (for example) \u00B8 (cedilla) instead of \u0327 (combining cedilla) in my text.

Eurgh, nasty! You can still do it automatically, though the process wouldn't be entirely lossless as it involves a compatibility decomposition (NFKD).

Normalise U+00B8 to NFKD and you'll get a space followed by the U+0327. You could then scan through the string looking for any case of space-followed-by-combining-character, and remove the space. Finally recompose to NFC to put the combining characters onto the previous character instead.

s= unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', s)
s= ''.join(c for i, c in enumerate(s) if c!=' ' or unicodedata.combining(s[i+1])==0)
s= unicodedata.normalize('NFC', s)