Python regex replacing \u2022

Question

This is my string:

raw_list = u\'Software Engineer with a huge passion for new and innovative products. Experienced gained from working in both big and fast-grow         


        

Answer 1

The key is to add the unicode u in front of the unicode character that you're trying to find - in this case the \u2022 which is the unicode character for a bullet. If your text contains unicode characters then your text is actually unicode text as opposed to a string (you can confirm by printing out your text and looking for the u at the beginning). See the below example, where I search for a unicode bullet character using regular expressions (RegEx) on both a string and unicode text:

import regular expressions package:

import re

unicode text:

my_unicode = u"""\u2022 Here\'s a string of data.\n
\u2022 There are new 
line characters \n, HTML line break tags 
, and bullets \u2002 together in 
a sequence.\n
\u2022 Our goal is to use RegEx to identify the sequences."""

type(my_unicode) #unicode

string:

my_string = """\u2022 Here\'s a string of data. \n
\u2022There are new 
line characters \n, HTML line break tags 
, and bullets \u2002 together in 
a sequence.\n
\u2022 Our goal is to use RegEx to identify the sequences."""

type(my_string)     #string 

we successfully find the first piece of text that we're looking for which doesn't yet contain the unicode characters:

re.findall('\n
', my_unicode)

re.findall('\n
', my_string)

with the addition of the unicode character, neither substring can be found:

re.findall('\n
\u2022', my_unicode)

re.findall('\n
\u2022', my_string)

Adding four backslashes works for the string, but it does not work for the unicode text:

re.findall('\n
\\\\u', my_unicode)

re.findall('\n
\\\\u', my_string)

Solution: Include the unicode u in front of the unicode character:

re.findall('\n
' u'\u2022', my_unicode)