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Python-Unicode System

Unicode is considered as the standard encoding for the majority of the world’s computer. It will make sure that the text will consists of letters, symbols, emoji and other control characters and will appear same in the different devices , platforms and digital documents . Unicode plays an vital role in the internet and computing industry.

However, working with Unicode in Python will be difficult and can lead to several errors. Read this tutorial to learn the fundamentals of using Unicode in Python.

What is Unicode System?

Software applications must need to show the display message output in several languages like English, French, Japanese, Hebrew, or Hindi. Python’s string type will use the Unicode Standard to denote the characters. This Python Program will allow work with different possible characters.

Moreover, a character is referred to as the smallest component of text. Some of the different characters are ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. Similarly, E and I are also included. A Unicode string is referred to as a sequence of code points and those are numbers from 0 through 0x10FFFF (1,114,111 decimal). Therefore, These sequences of code should be represented in memory as a set of code units and further, these code units will be mapped into 8-bit bytes.

What is Character Encoding?

It is a sequence of code points, which will be denoted in the form of memory as a set of code units, and then they are mapped into the 8-bit bytes. Character Encoding refers as the rules that are used to translate a Unicode String into a sequence of bytes.

Three types of Encoding are present and those are UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. UTF is referred to as the Unicode Transformation Format.

Python Unicode Support

Built-in support for Unicode is available from Python 3.0 onwards. The str type will consist of Unicode Characters and thus any string will be made using the single, double, or triple-quoted string syntax and further it is stored as Unicode. The default encoding for Python source code is UTF-8.

Henceforth, the string has a representation of the Unicode character (3/4) or its Unicode value.

var = "3/4"
print (var)
var = "\u00BE"
print (var)

Output

3/4
¾

Example 1

The example given below, a string 10 will be stored with the Unicode values of 1 and 0 and has values such as \u0031 and u0030 .

var = "\u0031\u0030"
print (var)

Output

10

Moreover, the string will show the text in the human-readable format. Bytes will store the binary characters as the binary data. Encoding will turn data into a series of bytes from the character string. Decoding is referred to as a process that will translate the bytes back to human-readable characters and symbols. In other words, encode is the string method and the decode is the Python byte object.

Example 2

In the provided example, the string variable has ASCII characters. ASCII is the sub-division of the Unicode character set. The encode method () will convert into the bytes object.

string = "Hello"
tobytes = string.encode('utf-8')
print (tobytes)
string = tobytes.decode('utf-8')
print (string)

The decode () method will turn the byte object back into the str object. The encoding method is mostly used in the utf-8.

b'Hello'
Hello

Example 3

This example has the Rupee symbol  (₹)  that is stored in the variable with the help of Unicode value. Hence, we can turn the string to bytes and back to str.

string = "\u20B9"
print (string)
tobytes = string.encode('utf-8')
print (tobytes)
string = tobytes.decode('utf-8')
print (string)

The output that will be displayed after running the code is given below:

₹
b'\xe2\x82\xb9'
₹

Conclusion

To conclude, this article will allow the beginner to improve their skills and knowledge regarding the Unicode system of Python. Character Encoding and several examples are provided in this article.

Python-Unicode System-FAQs

Hridhya Manoj

Hello, I’m Hridhya Manoj. I’m passionate about technology and its ever-evolving landscape. With a deep love for writing and a curious mind, I enjoy translating complex concepts into understandable, engaging content. Let’s explore the world of tech together