Why am I getting a u letter for each element's name in a python set?

Question

I'm doing tests for python's twitter library using Twitter API, I requested all trending topics for a specific WOEID, called this mexican_trends.

Then I tried to get every specific trend name in a set, tried this way:

trendsSet = set(trend['name']
            for trend in mexican_trends[0]['trends'])

But print dumps a u letter as prefix for every element in trendSet.

This is the print json.dumps(mexican_trends, indent=2)

[   {
    "created_at": "2014-01-17T18:51:20Z", 
    "trends": [
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=%23MentirasQueNoTienenPerdon", 
        "query": "%23MentirasQueNoTienenPerdon", 
        "name": "#MentirasQueNoTienenPerdon", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=%23FelizCumpleJLRoma", 
        "query": "%23FelizCumpleJLRoma", 
        "name": "#FelizCumpleJLRoma", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=%23EsDeChakas", 
        "query": "%23EsDeChakas", 
        "name": "#EsDeChakas", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=%22Jos%C3%A9+Sulaim%C3%A1n%22", 
        "query": "%22Jos%C3%A9+Sulaim%C3%A1n%22", 
        "name": "Jos\u00e9 Sulaim\u00e1n", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=%23RioRomaEnRitmoson", 
        "query": "%23RioRomaEnRitmoson", 
        "name": "#RioRomaEnRitmoson", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=%23TemasPerfectos", 
        "query": "%23TemasPerfectos", 
        "name": "#TemasPerfectos", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=%22Juan+Gelman%22", 
        "query": "%22Juan+Gelman%22", 
        "name": "Juan Gelman", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=Michoac%C3%A1n", 
        "query": "Michoac%C3%A1n", 
        "name": "Michoac\u00e1n", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=M%C3%A9xico", 
        "query": "M%C3%A9xico", 
        "name": "M\u00e9xico", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }, 
      {
        "url": "http://twitter.com/search?q=TLCAN", 
        "query": "TLCAN", 
        "name": "TLCAN", 
        "promoted_content": null, 
        "events": null
      }
    ], 
    "as_of": "2014-01-17T18:59:14Z", 
    "locations": [
      {
        "woeid": 23424900, 
        "name": "Mexico"
      }
    ]   
  } 
]

And trendsSet is printed as:

set([u'#RioRomaEnRitmoson', u'M\xe9xico', u'#MentirasQueNoTienenPerdon', u'TLCAN', u'#EsDeChakas', u'#FelizCumpleJLRoma', u'Juan Gelman', u'#TemasPerfectos', u'Jos\xe9 Sulaim\xe1n', u'Michoac\xe1n'])

As said, uith u letters as prefix for each element, why?

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/599625/python-string-prints-as-ustring — OnlyThenDidIReckonMyCurse, Jan 17 '14 at 19:13
Shit, that is right. I actually looked up for u in python arrays but got not results at first glance ... As mexican_trends is actually a list. — diegoaguilar, Jan 17 '14 at 19:16
@Wooble: Vote to close as a dup instead of just posting a comment. That gives more information to the OP, prevents hundreds of dups showing up in searches for future users, etc. — abarnert, Jan 17 '14 at 19:18

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 17 '14 at 19:12

1

The u means that the string is in Unicode.

answered Jan 17 '14 at 19:12

Alvaro Fuentes

16,937
4
56
68

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

1

The 'u' character preceding the string indicates that the string is a unicode string. The python docs at http://docs.python.org/2/howto/unicode.html and other questions on stack exchange such as Usage of unicode() and encode() functions in Python can help you if you have specific uses in mind, or need to operate with them.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

Community

1
1

answered Jan 17 '14 at 19:37

lagweezle

516
5
12

Why am I getting a u letter for each element's name in a python set?

2 Answers2