Why do I get the u“xyz” format when I print a list of unicode strings in Python?

Question

Please observe the following behavior:

a = u\"foo\"
b = u\"b\\xe1r\"   # \\xe1 is an \'a\' with an accent
s = [a, b]

print a, b
print s
for x in s: print x,         


        

Answer 1

When you print a list, you get the repr() of each element, lists aren't really meant to be printed, so python tries to print something representative of it's structure.

If you want to format it in any particular way, either be explicit about how you want it formatted, or override it's __repr__ method.