[Python-3000] Displaying strings containing unicode escapes

Mon May 5 04:22:28 CEST 2008

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Jim Jewett writes:
>> > I realize that this is the traditional escape form, but I wonder if it
> > might be better to just use the character names instead of the hex
> > character codes.
>> That would require changing the parser, no? Of all types, string had
> better roundtrip through repr()!

The string parser has understood Unicode names for quite some time 
(examples use 2.5.1):
 >>> print u"\N{GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}"
α
 >>> print u"\N{GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA}"
Α
 >>> print u"\N{GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS}"
Ά
Using the names gets fairly verbose compared to the hex escapes though:
 >>> u"\N{GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}"
u'\u03b1'
 >>> u"\N{GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA}"
u'\u0391'
 >>> u"\N{GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS}"
u'\u0386'
Cheers,
Nick.
-- 
Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
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