Question

I’m new to python so I really don’t know the language very well.

the following example was taken from here http://docs.python.org/library/json.html

>>> import json
>>> json.loads('["foo", {"bar":["baz", null, 1.0, 2]}]')
[u'foo', {u'bar': [u'baz', None, 1.0, 2]}]

what does the u mean? and how do i know which elements are available in the dictionary?

Answer 1

Ignacio’s answer a bit more verbose (no upvotes to me)

u’something’ means that ‘something’ is a unicode string, and not for instance an ascii string. Generally text is encoded as 8-bit characters, and you need an encoding to properly interpret/display it. Unicode is 16-bit and doesn’t need seperate encodings for the various locale dependent characters.

In a dictionary (enclosed by {}) the key is the part before the “:” and the value comes after.

You got a list, with elements:

• foo, a Unicode string
• a dictionary containing:
  • a key (unicode) “bar”, and accessible through that key a list with values
    • unicode string baz,
    • None
    • a float 1.0
    • an integer 2