Python string to unicode [duplicate]

Answer 1

Unicode escapes only work in unicode strings, so this

 a="\u2026"

is actually a string of 6 characters: '\', 'u', '2', '0', '2', '6'.

To make unicode out of this, use decode('unicode-escape'):

a="\u2026"
print repr(a)
print repr(a.decode('unicode-escape'))

## '\\u2026'
## u'\u2026'

Answer 2

>>> a="Hello\u2026"
>>> print a.decode('unicode-escape')
Hello…

Answer 3

Decode it with the unicode-escape codec:

>>> a="Hello\u2026"
>>> a.decode('unicode-escape')
u'Hello\u2026'
>>> print _
Hello…

This is because for a non-unicode string the \u2026 is not recognised but is instead treated as a literal series of characters (to put it more clearly, 'Hello\\u2026'). You need to decode the escapes, and the unicode-escape codec can do that for you.

Note that you can get unicode to recognise it in the same way by specifying the codec argument:

>>> unicode(a, 'unicode-escape')
u'Hello\u2026'

But the a.decode() way is nicer.