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As a French user of Python 2.7, I'm trying to properly print strings containing accents such as "é", "è", "à", etc. in the Python console.

I already know the trick of using u before the explicit value of a string, such as :

print(u'Université')

which properly prints the last character.

Now, my question is: how can I do the same for a string that is stored as a variable?

Indeed, I know that I could do the following:

mystring = u'Université'
print(mystring)

but the problem is that the value of mystring is bound to be passed into a SQL query (using psycopg2), and therefore I can't afford to store the u inside the value of mystring.

so how could I do something like "print the unicode value of mystring" ?

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  • u'...' creates an object of type unicode. Your mystring object is *already such an object; it's not the print() function that turns it into something else. Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 9:45
  • Most SQL database adapters can give you Unicode string objects directly, no need to convert. For str objects (byte strings), you need to decode from bytes to Unicode. See nedbatchelder.com/text/unipain.html for a great article on the subject. Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 9:46
  • Then also read joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/… and the Python Unicode HOWTO. Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 9:46
  • I don't really see why this is closed as too broad. We have the same question for "raw strings", and that one isn't closed. Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 9:48
  • does it mean that if I do mystring = u'Université' and then I send a query like "INSERT INTO mytable VALUES "+mystring+";" the value passed to SQL will be understood as 'Université'? Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 9:49

1 Answer 1

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The u sigil is not part of the value, it's just a type indicator. To convert a string into a Unicode string, you need to know the encoding.

unicodestring = mystring.decode('utf-8')  # or 'latin-1' or ... whatever

and to print it you typically (in Python 2) need to convert back to whatever the system accepts on the output filehandle:

print(unicodestring.encode('utf-8'))  # or 'latin-1' or ... whatever

Python 3 clarifies (though not directly simplifies) the situation by keeping Unicode strings and (what is now called) bytes objects separate.

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print(mystring.decode('utf-8')) works like a charm for displaying accented characters properly in the console. Thanks.

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