[Tutor] String encoding

[Dave Angel]

On 08/26/2011 11:49 AM, Prasad, Ramit wrote:
> <snip>
> Yep, it is. Thanks those charts are exactly what I wanted! Now I have another question. What is the difference between what print shows and what the interpreter shows?
>
>>>> print s.decode('latin-1')
> MÉXICO
The decoded characters are a Unicode string.  Python prints that string 
by encoding it according to whatever sys.stdout is defaulted to. If that 
matches your actual terminal, then you see it properly.
>>>> s.decode('latin-1')
> u'M\xc9XICO'
Here, because you don't assign it to anything, the interpreter is 
printing a repr() of the object.
>>>> print repr(s)
> 'M\xc9XICO'
Here your code is doing the same thing, but explicitly this time.
>>>> repr(s)
> "'M\\xc9XICO'"
>
>
Here, the repr() is created (which is a string containing single 
quotes), but then you don't print it, you just leave it.  So the 
interpreter shows you the repr()  of that object, enclosing it in double 
quotes for simplicity.



-- 

DaveA