Python: unicode conversion

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#!/usr/bin/python

# To convert a Unicode string into an 8-bit string using a specific encoding, Unicode objects provide an encode() method that takes one argument, the name of the encoding. Lowercase names for encodings are preferred.

u"äöü".encode('utf-8')
# '\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc'

# If you have data in a specific encoding and want to produce a corresponding Unicode string from it, you can use the unicode() function with the encoding name as the second argument.

unicode('\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc', 'utf-8')
# u'\xe4\xf6\xfc'