Question

I’m doing os.listdir() on a directory, and it returns a list like this:

[u'Somefile.gif', u'SomeDirectory', u'SomeJPEG.jpeg']

What are the u’s for? In my searches, I’ve heard that this:

1. Is a fixed bug.
2. Means the listed items are unicode.

I don’t believe either of these to be true.

Answer 1

In Python2, the u in u'...' indicates the object is unicode.

From the docs:

Changed in version 2.3: On Windows NT/2k/XP and Unix, if path is a
Unicode object, the result will be a list of Unicode objects.
Undecodable filenames will still be returned as string objects.

Perhaps you are calling os.listdir with a unicode argument. For example:

In [51]: import os

In [52]: os.listdir('.')
Out[52]: ['a', 'a.ps']

In [53]: os.listdir(u'.')
Out[53]: [u'a', u'a.ps']