How do I get str.translate to work with Unicode strings?

Question

I have the following code:

import string
def translate_non_alphanumerics(to_translate, translate_to=\'_\'):
    not_letters_or_digits = u\'!\"#%\\\'()*+,-./:         


        

Answer 1

I came up with the following combination of my original function and Mike's version that works with Unicode and ASCII strings:

def translate_non_alphanumerics(to_translate, translate_to=u'_'):
    not_letters_or_digits = u'!"#%\'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~'
    if isinstance(to_translate, unicode):
        translate_table = dict((ord(char), unicode(translate_to))
                               for char in not_letters_or_digits)
    else:
        assert isinstance(to_translate, str)
        translate_table = string.maketrans(not_letters_or_digits,
                                           translate_to
                                              *len(not_letters_or_digits))
    return to_translate.translate(translate_table)

Update: "coerced" translate_to to unicode for the unicode translate_table. Thanks Mike.