How to convert iso 8859-1 in simple letter using python

I m trying to clean my sqlite database using python. At first I loaded using this code: import sqlite3, pandas as pd con = sqlite3.connect("DATABASE.db")

import sqlite3, pandas as pd    
df = pd.read_sql_query("SELECT TITLE from DOCUMENT", con)

So I got the dirty words. for example this "Conciliaci\363n" I want to get "Conciliacion". I used this code:

df['TITLE']=df['TITle'].apply(lambda x: x.decode('iso-8859-1').encode('utf8'))

I got b'' in blank cells. and got 'Conciliaci\\363n' too. So maybe I'm doing wrong. how can I solve this problem. Thanks in advance.

Solution

It's unclear, but if your string contains a literal backslash and numbers like this:

>>> s= r"Conciliaci\363n"  # A raw string to make a literal escape code
>>> s
'Conciliaci\\363n'         # debug display of string shows an escaped backslash
>>> print(s)
Conciliaci\363n            # printing prints the escape

Then this will decode it correctly:

>>> s.encode('ascii').decode('unicode-escape')  # convert to byte string, then decode
'Conciliación'

If you want to lose the accent mark as your question shows, then decomposing the Unicode string, converting to ASCII ignoring errors, then converting back to a Unicode string will do it:

>>> s2 = s.encode('ascii').decode('unicode-escape')
>>> s2
'Conciliación'
>>> import unicodedata as ud
>>> ud.normalize('NFD',s2) # Make Unicode decomposed form
'Conciliación'              # The ó is now an ASCII 'o' and a combining accent
>>> ud.normalize('NFD',s2).encode('ascii',errors='ignore').decode('ascii')
'Conciliacion'   # accent isn't ASCII, so is removed