What encoding do I need to display a GBP sign (pound sign) using python on cygwin in Windows XP?

Question

I have a python (2.5.4) script which I run in cygwin (in a DOS box on Windows XP). I want to include a pound sign (£) in the output. If I do so, I get this error:

Answer 1

The Unicode for a pound sign is 163 (decimal) or A3 in hex, so the following should work regardless of the encoding of your script, as long as the output encoding is working correctly.

print u"\xA3"