> >> I am using primarily UTF-8 based strings, like Hindi or Bengali. Can I > >> use Python to help me in this regard? > > > > I can say from experience that Python on Windows (at least, Python 2.5 > > on 32-bit Vista) works perfectly well with UTF-8 files containing > > Bangla. I have had trouble with working with the data in IDLE, however, > > which seems to prefer ASCII by default. > > Defaults almost never work for encodings. You have to be explicit: add an > encoding declaration to the top of your source file if you use encoded > literal strings in your code; use the codecs module with a suitable > encoding to read encoded text files, and use an XML parser when reading > XML.
Actually, default *should* work for XML. The default encoding for an XML file is UTF-8 (AFAIK). Cheers, Emm -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
