Unicode support in python

[sonald]

HI
Can u please tell me if there is any package or class that I can import
for internationalization, or unicode support?

This module is just a small part of our application, and we are not
really supposed to alter the code.
We do not have nobody here to help us with python here. and are
supposed to just try and understand the program. Today I am in a
position, that I can fix the bugs arising from the code, but cannot
really try something like internationalization on my own. Can u help?
Do you want me to post the complete code for your reference?
plz lemme know asap.


John Roth wrote:
> sonald wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I am using python2.4.1
> >
> > I need to pass russian text into python and validate the same.
> > Can u plz guide me on how to make my existing code support the
> > russian  text.
> >
> > Is there any module that can be used for unicode support in python?
> >
> > Incase of decimal numbers, how to handle "comma as a decimal point"
> > within a number
> >
> > Currently the existing code is woking fine for English text
> > Please help.
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> > regards
> > sonal
>
> As both of the other responders have said, the
> coding comment at the front only affects source
> text; it has absolutely no effect at run time. In
> particular, it's not even necessary to use it to
> handle non-English languages as long as you
> don't want to write literals in those languages.
>
> What seems to be missing is the notion that
> external files are _always_ byte files, and have to
> be _explicitly_ decoded into unicode strings,
> and then encoded back to whatever the external
> encoding needs to be, each and every time you
> read or write a file, or copy string data from
> byte strings to unicode strings and back.
> There is no good way of handling this implicitly:
> you can't simply say "utf-8" or "iso-8859-whatever"
> in one place and expect it to work.
>
> You've got to specify the encoding on each and
> every open, or else use the encode and decode
> string methods. This is a great motivation for
> eliminating duplication and centralizing your
> code!
>
> For your other question: the general words
> are localization and locale. Look up locale in
> the index. It's a strange subject which I don't
> know much about, but that should get you 
> started.
> 
> John Roth