Python unicode conversion to UTF-8

[Chrysie]

Hi,

I am new to python. I am using python 2.6.6 with pyodbc-2.1.8 and pywin32-216 on Windows Vista.

I was able to connect to MS Access with pyodbc and execute my SELECT statement to retrieve data from MS Access. However, what I have retrieved appeared to be in Unicode strings (e.g., u'xyz', etc.) which I could not use as keys to build a dictionary, and I could not use as strings to write regular expressions to match with certain patterns.

I have tried using Unicode encoding like s.decode(encodi ng, [,error]) with default encoding (ASCII), and 'utf-8', and 'ignore' invalid characters for error flag, but could not get that to work.

Are there any ways to convert the unicode string so that I can use it as key to build dictionary and use for regular expresssion matching? Some examples would be highly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help!

[bvdet]

Try one of these:

>>> str(u'xyz')
'xyz'
>>> u'xyz'
u'xyz'
>>> s = u'xyz'
>>> s.encode('utf-8')
'xyz'