unicode question

[wolfgang haefelinger]

Hi,

I wonder whether someone could explain me a bit what's going on here:

import sys

# I'm running Mandrake 1o and Windows XP.
print sys.version

##  2.3.3 (#2, Feb 17 2004, 11:45:40) [GCC 3.3.2 (Mandrake Linux 10.0 
3.3.2-6mdk)]
##  2.3.4 (#53, May 25 2004, 21:17:02) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)]

print "sys.getdefaultencoding = ",sys.getdefaultencoding()
# This prints always "ascii" ..

## just a class
class Y:
   def __str__(self):
      return self.c

## define unicode character (ie. string)
gamma = u"\N{GREEK CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA}"

y = Y()
y.c = gamma

## works fine: prints greek capital gamma on terminal on windows (chcp 437).
## Mandrake 1o nothing gets printed but at least no excecption gets thrown.
print  gamma                                  # (1)

## same as before ..
print  y.__str__()                            # (2)

## encoding error
print  y                                           # (3) ??????????????

## ascii encoding error ..
sys.stdout.write(gamma)                  # (4)

I wonder especially about case 2. I can see that "print y" makes a call to
Y.__str__() . But Y.__str__() can be printed?? So what is 'print' exactly
doing?

Thanks for any help,
Wolfgang.