.format() and unicode strings

Question

i am trying to format a bunch of strings in python 2.7.6. Everything works properly until an unicode sign shows up. This short example shows my problem:

    a = 'ö'
    b = 'd'
    c = 'e'

    print('{:2}{:2}{:2}').format(a, b, c)

The result is:

öd e

But it should be:

ö d e

Tried a lot of stuff with encoding, decoding, unicodedata.normalize, but nothing seems to work. Anyone got an idea what i am doing wrong? Thanks for help and please excuse for my bad english. Greetz,

BigZ

I bet this has something to do with the fact that len(a) is 2, even though it looks like it's only one character long. — Kevin
– Kevin, Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 13:46
Works fine for me on 2.7.6 - note that your parentheses are a bit wayward, but don't really change the syntax. — jonrsharpe
– jonrsharpe, Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 13:54
Decoding the letter into utf-8 will make len(a) show a length of 1, but if i try this in my code it throws an UnicodeDecodeError if an unicode sign shows up :/ — BigZ
– BigZ, Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 13:55

mhawke · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-30 13:55:10Z

1

Does this do the trick for you?

>>> a = 'ö'
>>> b = 'd'
>>> c = 'e'
>>> print(u'{:2}{:2}{:2}'.format(a.decode('utf8'), b, c))
ö d e

This assumes that your data is utf8 encoded. Note that the format string is unicode.

Also, this doesn't seem to be a problem in Python 3.

answered Sep 30, 2014 at 13:55

mhawke

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7 Comments

BigZ Over a year ago

Nope, sorry. This works fine in the example, but in my code it throws a UnicodeDecode Exception. :/

Veedrac Over a year ago

@BigZ You have a fundamental problem in that you're storing encoded data as bytes and wanting Python to know what it is.

BigZ Over a year ago

So how do i get python to store my encoded data as strings?

Veedrac Over a year ago

It's hard to tell without knowing what you're doing, but you'll want to use unicode for text.

BigZ Over a year ago

Just discovered that im getting unicode and strings in my code, while parsing html and printing the results... -.- Is there a way to unify everything?

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