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I did not want to post this question but tried almost all the things, nothing seems to work. On python 2.7

ord(unicode('₹', "utf-8"))

This produces 8377 as the output. How do I get '₹' from 8377?

unichr(8377) and chr(8377) do not work as they throw ordinal not in range(128) exception. I tried other things as well but I think I am headed in a wrong direction.

Nihal Sharma
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1 Answers1

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Problem

According to the documentation :

>>> unichr(8377)
u'\u20b9'

This should work on any python 2.7 on any system.

It does exactly what you asked : it returns a single unicode character from its integer representation. This unicode character isn't displayed as ₹, though. Instead, a repr version is returned, which can be displayed with ascii characters.

Depending on your terminal, print will either display the character correctly :

Python 2.7.6 (default, Oct 26 2016, 20:30:19) 
[GCC 4.8.4] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> unichr(8377)
u'\u20b9'
>>> print unichr(8377)
₹

or throw an error (powershell on Windows) :

PS C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0> python
Python 2.7.13 (v2.7.13:a06454b1afa1, Dec 17 2016, 20:42:59) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (
Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> print unichr(8377)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python2.7\lib\encodings\cp850.py", line 12, in en
code
    return codecs.charmap_encode(input,errors,encoding_map)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character u'\u20b9' in position
 0: character maps to <undefined>
>>>

Possible solution

Your terminal needs to accept unicode characters.

This answer might help you :

import locale
print unichr(8377).encode(locale.getdefaultlocale()[1], 'replace')

Depending on your encoding, the character might be displayed correctly or as a ?.

This character substitution is called "tofu" or "mojibake", and it isn't a Python problem. It's related to the underlying terminal (e.g. Powershell).

Those threads might help you.

Community
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Eric Duminil
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  • "`unichr(8377)` and `chr(8377)` do not work" - and still doesn't work after `import unicodedata`, either (for me at least). – TigerhawkT3 Feb 23 '17 at 10:12
  • It's expected for `chr(8377)` not to work with Python 2. `unichr` should work, at least it does on all the systems I tried it on (Win, Linux, Mac Os) with Python 2.7. Which version do you use, on which system? – Eric Duminil Feb 23 '17 at 10:14
  • That still doesn't seem to work, on 2.7.9 in 8.1's PowerShell. – TigerhawkT3 Feb 23 '17 at 10:35
  • Sorry, I cannot reproduce. It outputs '?' in my PowerShell, without throwing any error. just using `print unichr(8377)` does produce an error, though. – Eric Duminil Feb 23 '17 at 10:37
  • @TigerhawkT3 That's powershell's problem, not Python's. If powershell cannot display the Indian rupee sign, there's nothing Python can do about it when inside Powershell. – Eric Duminil Feb 23 '17 at 10:52
  • To the downvoters : it's not my fault if Powershell sucks. – Eric Duminil Feb 23 '17 at 11:08
  • When you tell someone to do `print(*lst)` and they tell you it's a syntax error, do you tell them it's not your fault if Python 2 sucks? – TigerhawkT3 Feb 23 '17 at 11:17
  • @TigerhawkT3: There's a difference, though. It's very possible to achieve the desired output with Python2, albeit with a different syntax : `for l in lst: print l,` – Eric Duminil Feb 23 '17 at 12:29