A quick reply to all you contributors (by the way, I was not expecting to get so many responses so quickly - I am (as you probably realise) new to this kind of thing.
I am stuck with Python 2.X because ESRI's ArcGIS system uses it - otherwise, yes, you're all right, I would be in Python 3.X like a shot! So that rules out any answers to my questions that involve Python 3.X. (Sorry, perhaps I should have mentioned that at the outset - as I say, I'm new to all this.) ESRI compound the problem, actually, by making all the strings that the ArcGIS Python interface delivers (from MS SQLServer) Unicode! (I suppose, on reflection, they have no choice.) So I am stuck with the worst of both worlds - a generation of Python (2.X) that is inept at handling unicode (on an operating system (MS Windows 7) that is not much better, and being flooded with unicode strings from my users' databases! Anything you can come up with to ease all this (like, "convert *all* your strings to unicode as soon as you can and render them as ASCII as late as you can") has already been of help. On the original question, well, I accept Ned's answer (at 10.22). I also like the idea of a helper function given by Peter Otten at 09.51. It still seems like a crutch to help poor old Python 2.X to do what any programmer (or, at least the programmers like me :-) ) think it ought to be able to by itself. The distinction between the "geekiness" of a tuple compared with the "non-geekiness" of a string is, itself, far too geeky for my liking. The distinction seems to be an utterly spurious - even artificial or arbitrary one to me. (Sorry about the rant.) On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Ned Batchelder <n...@nedbatchelder.com>wrote: > On 10/11/13 4:16 AM, Stephen Tucker wrote: > > I am using IDLE, Python 2.7.2 on Windows 7, 64-bit. > > I have four questions: > > 1. Why is it that > print unicode_object > displays non-ASCII characters in the unicode object correctly, whereas > print (unicode_object, another_unicode_object) > displays non-ASCII characters in the unicode objects as escape sequences > (as repr() does)? > > 2. Given that this is actually *deliberately *the case (which I, at the > moment, am finding difficult to accept), what is the neatest (that is, the > most Pythonic) way to get non-ASCII characters in unicode objects in tuples > displayed correctly? > > 3. A similar thing happens when I write such objects and tuples to a file > opened by > codecs.open ( ..., "utf-8") > I have also found that, even though I use write to send the text to the > file, unicode objects not in tuples get their non-ASCII characters sent to > the file correctly, whereas, unicode objects in tuples get their characters > sent to the file as escape sequences. Why is this the case? > > 4. As for question 1 above, I ask here also: What is the neatest way to > get round this? > > Stephen Tucker. > > > Although Python 3 is better than Python 2 at Unicode, as the others have > said, the most important point is one that you hit upon yourself. > > When you print an object x, you are actually printing str(x). The str() > of a tuple is a paren, followed by the repr()'s of its elements, separated > by commas, then a closing paren. Tuples and lists use the repr() of their > elements when producing either their own str() or their own repr(). > > Python 3 does better at this because repr() in Python 3 will gladly > include non-ASCII characters in its output, while Python 2 will only > include ASCII characters, and so must resort to escape sequences. (BTW: if > you like the ASCII-only idea from Python 2, Python 3 has the ascii() > function and the %a string formatting directive for that very purpose.) > > The two string representation alternatives str() and repr() can be > confusing. Think of it as: str() is for customers, repr() is for > developers, or: str() is for humans, repr() is for geeks. The reason > tuples use the repr() of their elements is that the parens+commas > representation of a tuple is geeky to begin with, so it uses repr() of its > elements, even for str(tuple). > > The way to avoid repr() for the elements is to format the tuple yourself. > > --Ned. >
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