diff --git a/Doc/howto/unicode.rst b/Doc/howto/unicode.rst index 4fb8873d947..ff3c7217ac6 100644 --- a/Doc/howto/unicode.rst +++ b/Doc/howto/unicode.rst @@ -2,10 +2,12 @@ Unicode HOWTO ***************** -:Release: 1.02 +:Release: 1.03 -This HOWTO discusses Python's support for Unicode, and explains various problems -that people commonly encounter when trying to work with Unicode. +This HOWTO discusses Python 2.x's support for Unicode, and explains +various problems that people commonly encounter when trying to work +with Unicode. (This HOWTO has not yet been updated to cover the 3.x +versions of Python.) Introduction to Unicode ======================= @@ -144,8 +146,9 @@ problems. 4. Many Internet standards are defined in terms of textual data, and can't handle content with embedded zero bytes. -Generally people don't use this encoding, instead choosing other encodings that -are more efficient and convenient. +Generally people don't use this encoding, instead choosing other +encodings that are more efficient and convenient. UTF-8 is probably +the most commonly supported encoding; it will be discussed below. Encodings don't have to handle every possible Unicode character, and most encodings don't. For example, Python's default encoding is the 'ascii' @@ -222,8 +225,8 @@ Wikipedia entries are often helpful; see the entries for "character encoding" , for example. -Python's Unicode Support -======================== +Python 2.x's Unicode Support +============================ Now that you've learned the rudiments of Unicode, we can look at Python's Unicode features. @@ -272,7 +275,7 @@ Unicode result). The following examples show the differences:: >>> unicode('\x80abc', errors='ignore') u'abc' -Encodings are specified as strings containing the encoding's name. Python 2.4 +Encodings are specified as strings containing the encoding's name. Python 2.7 comes with roughly 100 different encodings; see the Python Library Reference at :ref:`standard-encodings` for a list. Some encodings have multiple names; for example, 'latin-1', 'iso_8859_1' and '8859' are all @@ -427,11 +430,19 @@ encoding declaration:: When you run it with Python 2.4, it will output the following warning:: - amk:~$ python p263.py + amk:~$ python2.4 p263.py sys:1: DeprecationWarning: Non-ASCII character '\xe9' in file p263.py on line 2, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details +Python 2.5 and higher are stricter and will produce a syntax error:: + + amk:~$ python2.5 p263.py + File "/tmp/p263.py", line 2 + SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xc3' in file /tmp/p263.py + on line 2, but no encoding declared; see + http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details + Unicode Properties ------------------ @@ -693,7 +704,11 @@ several links. Version 1.02: posted August 16 2005. Corrects factual errors. +Version 1.03: posted June 20 2010. Notes that Python 3.x is not covered, +and that the HOWTO only covers 2.x. + +.. comment Describe Python 3.x support (new section? new document?) .. comment Additional topic: building Python w/ UCS2 or UCS4 support .. comment Describe obscure -U switch somewhere? .. comment Describe use of codecs.StreamRecoder and StreamReaderWriter