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pythonunicodeutf-8encodemojibake

How encode strings using python

I have lists with element

[u'\xd0\xbc\xd1\x82\xd1\x81 \xd0\xbe\xd1\x84\xd0\xb8\xd1\x86\xd0\xb8\xd0\xb0\xd0\xbb\xd1\x8c\xd0\xbd\xd1\x8b\xd0\xb9 \xd1\x81\xd0\xb0\xd0\xb9\xd1\x82']
[u'\xd0\xbc\xd1\x82\xd1\x81 \xd0\xbe\xd1\x84\xd0\xb8\xd1\x86\xd0\xb8\xd0\xb0\xd0\xbb\xd1\x8c\xd0\xbd\xd1\x8b\xd0\xb9 \xd1\x81\xd0\xb0\xd0\xb9\xd1\x82']

I try to convert it using

val[0].encode('utf-8')

And got after it

мÑÑ Ð¾ÑиÑиалÑнÑй ÑайÑ
мÑÑ Ð¾ÑиÑиалÑнÑй ÑайÑ

What I do wrong?

Solution

  • You have a Mojibake; text decoded using the wrong codec.

    You have what looks like it was decoded or Latin-1 or Windows codepage 1252, while it should have been decoded as UTF-8 instead.

    Either reverse the encoding manually, or use the excellent ftfy package to do it for you:

    >>> import ftfy
>>> data = [u'\xd0\xbc\xd1\x82\xd1\x81 \xd0\xbe\xd1\x84\xd0\xb8\xd1\x86\xd0\xb8\xd0\xb0\xd0\xbb\xd1\x8c\xd0\xbd\xd1\x8b\xd0\xb9 \xd1\x81\xd0\xb0\xd0\xb9\xd1\x82']
>>> ftfy.ftfy(data[0])
u'\u043c\u0442\u0441 \u043e\u0444\u0438\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0441\u0430\u0439\u0442'
>>> print ftfy.ftfy(data[0])
мтс официальный сайт

    Manually, you'd re-encode as Latin-1:

    >>> data[0].encode('latin1')
'\xd0\xbc\xd1\x82\xd1\x81 \xd0\xbe\xd1\x84\xd0\xb8\xd1\x86\xd0\xb8\xd0\xb0\xd0\xbb\xd1\x8c\xd0\xbd\xd1\x8b\xd0\xb9 \xd1\x81\xd0\xb0\xd0\xb9\xd1\x82'
>>> data[0].encode('latin1').decode('utf8')
u'\u043c\u0442\u0441 \u043e\u0444\u0438\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0441\u0430\u0439\u0442'
>>> print data[0].encode('latin1').decode('utf8')
мтс официальный сайт

    Note that you have a list with one unicode object in it. You may want to study up on Python and Unicode; I recommend the following documents:

    These will help you understand when to encode and when to decode, and what codec to use.