Stephan: > I'd rather use german_ae.encode('latin1') ^^^^^^ > which returns '\xe4'.
uhm ... then there is a misprint in the discussion of the recipe; BTW what's the difference between .encode and .decode ? (yes, I have been living in happy ASCII-land until now ... ;) I should probably ask for an unicode primer, I have found the one by Marc André Lemburg http://www.reportlab.com/i18n/python_unicode_tutorial.html and I am reading it right now. Michele Simionato -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list