🌐 Python Unicode System – Text Encoding, UTF-8, and Examples (2025)
🔍 What Is the Unicode System in Python?
The Unicode System is a universal character encoding standard that assigns a unique number (code point) to every character in every language—across all platforms and programs.
In Python, strings are Unicode by default, meaning they can represent characters from all writing systems, not just ASCII.
✅ Python 3.x and Unicode
Starting from Python 3.0:
- All string literals like
"Hello"or'world'are Unicode by default. - This means you can use characters from any language, emoji, and symbols without extra encoding steps.
Example:
greet = "こんにちは" # Japanese
emoji = "😊"
print(greet, emoji)
💡 Why Unicode Matters
Unicode allows you to:
- Safely work with international characters and symbols
- Handle multilingual inputs in web apps, databases, APIs, etc.
- Prevent encoding/decoding errors in text processing
🔠 Encoding and Decoding
- Encoding: Converting a Unicode string to bytes (e.g., UTF-8)
- Decoding: Converting bytes back into Unicode string
s = "नमस्ते"
encoded = s.encode("utf-8")
decoded = encoded.decode("utf-8")
print(decoded) # नमस्ते
🔧 Popular Unicode Encodings
| Encoding | Description |
|---|---|
UTF-8 | Default, compact, and web-friendly |
UTF-16 | Uses 2 or 4 bytes, supports emoji |
UTF-32 | Uses 4 bytes for every character |
ASCII | Old 7-bit encoding (subset of Unicode) |
⚠️ Common Unicode Issues
- Reading files with the wrong encoding (fix using
encoding='utf-8') - Mixing
str(text) andbytes(binary)
with open("file.txt", encoding="utf-8") as f:
content = f.read()
📌 Summary – Python Unicode System
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Default string type | Unicode (str) in Python 3 |
| Supports | All global characters + emojis |
| Common encoding | UTF-8 |
| Convert to bytes | .encode("utf-8") |
| Convert from bytes | .decode("utf-8") |
❓ FAQs – Python Unicode System
❓ What is Unicode in Python?
Unicode is a standard that assigns a unique number (code point) to every character in every language. In Python 3, all string values are Unicode by default.
❓ Are strings in Python 3 Unicode?
Yes. All strings created using quotes ("...", '...') in Python 3 are Unicode by default. You don’t need to prefix them with u"" as in Python 2.
❓ What is the default encoding for Python strings?
Python uses UTF-8 as the default encoding when reading or writing text, especially in files and web data.
❓ How do I encode and decode a string in Python?
- To encode (string → bytes):
b = "hello".encode("utf-8") - To decode (bytes → string):
s = b.decode("utf-8")
❓ Why do I get encoding errors when opening a file?
Encoding errors usually occur when:
- The file isn’t encoded in UTF-8
- The file is opened without specifying the correct encoding
✅ Fix:
with open("file.txt", encoding="utf-8") as f:
data = f.read()
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