quick unicode Q

[John Morey]

I have a variable that contains a string which may or may not include
unicode characters, I understand that I declare a unicode string like this
u'whatever' , the question is that when that string is read in from
an external source (in this case an id3 tag) how do I make the
interpretter understand that it may contain unicode?

cheers

 

[Erik Max Francis]

I have a variable that contains a string which may or may not include
unicode characters, I understand that I declare a unicode string like this
u'whatever' , the question is that when that string is read in from
an external source (in this case an id3 tag) how do I make the
interpretter understand that it may contain unicode?

Read it as a string, and then decode it with the .decode method. You
specify what encoding it's in.

 

[Heiko Wundram]

Read it as a string, and then decode it with the .decode method. You
specify what encoding it's in.

Most probably, the OP is asking what to do with an UTF-8 encoded string.

To decode that, just use:

s.decode("utf-8")

to get a unicode string object.

Example:

HTH!

--- Heiko.

 

[Erik Max Francis]

Most probably, the OP is asking what to do with an UTF-8 encoded string.

To decode that, just use:

s.decode("utf-8")

to get a unicode string object.

Flags in the ID3 tag specify the encoding. It is not always UTF-8.

http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-structure.txt

 

[Heiko Wundram]

Flags in the ID3 tag specify the encoding. It is not always UTF-8.

http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-structure.txt

Okay... Didn't know that, and I'm pretty sure with ID3V1 this was always
utf-8 in case it was unicode (which was a non-standard extension anyway).
Thanks for the info.

--- Heiko.

 

[Damjan]

Read it as a string, and then decode it with the .decode method. You

Most probably, the OP is asking what to do with an UTF-8 encoded string.

To decode that, just use:

s.decode("utf-8")

I prefer:

unicode(s, 'utf-8')

That way it's more clear that what you get is a unicode object.