Question

What is the proper way to use str.decode and unicode.encode?

Eg.

print str.decode
print unicode.encode

Answer 1

Ignacio’s example is correct but depends on your console being able to display Unicode characters, which on Windows it usually can’t. Here’s the same thing with only safe string escapes (reprs):

>>> '\xe3\x81\x82'.decode('utf-8')    # three top-bit-set bytes, representing one character
u'\u3042'                             # Hiragana letter A

>>> u'\u3042'.encode('shift-jis')
'\x82\xa0'                            # only requires two bytes in the Shift-JIS encoding

>>> unicode('\x82\xa0', 'shift-jis')  # alternative way of doing a decode
u'\u3042'

when you’re writing to eg. a file or via a web server, or you’re on another operating system where the console supports UTF-8, it’s a bit easier.