Special chacacters in python 3.3

Question

I'm trying to do a small decoder.
I want to assign the value 'a' to the special letter "("
example: ( = "a"
and if I input "(" it prints it to "a" like:

If I enter "(%!)(":

It prints the equivalent for each character like:

LadyBa

Hope you understand what I mean!
I know it need unicode or something like that but I'm not very good at python
I'm trying to learn.
Working on windows python 3.3

Answer 1

EDIT: this is good, thanks to Ashwini Chaudhary

>>> d = {'(': 'a'}
>>> "".join(d.get(x,x) for x in 'text with m(ny letters')
'text with many letters'

This is a longer solution but does the equivalent:

So you want to translate letters and keep thoos untouched that you do not know?

>>> d = {'(': 'a'}
>>> ''.join(map(lambda letter: d.get(letter, letter), 'text with m(ny letters'))
'text with many letters'

Explanation

---

This

d.get(letter, letter)

tries to find the letter in d and if not present returns letter (the second letter)

---

lambda letter: lalala

is the same as

def f(letter):
    return lalala
f # return f

---

map(function, list) 

does this:

[function(element) for element in list]

which is a short form of

l = []
for element in list:
    l.append(function(element))
l # returns that list

---

''.join(list)

is the same as

string = ''
for element in list:
    string += element
string # return string as result