What is input() supposed to return? >>> u'a' == 'a' True >>> >>> r1 = input(':') :a >>> r2 = input(':') :u'a' >>> r1 == r2 False >>> type(r1), len(r1) (<class 'str'>, 1) >>> type(r2), len(r2) (<class 'str'>, 4) >>> --- sys.argv? jmf