Python 2.7 - Why python encode a string when .append() in a list?

Question

My problem String

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
print ("################################")
foo = "СТ142Н.0000"
print (type(foo))
print("foo: "+foo)
foo_l = []
foo_l.append(foo)
print ("List: " )
print (foo_l)
print ("List decode: ")
print([x.decode("UTF-8") for x in foo_l])
print("Pop: "+foo_l.pop())

Print result:

################################
<type 'str'>
foo: СТ142Н.0000
List: 
['\xd0\xa1\xd0\xa2142\xd0\x9d.0000']
List decode: 
[u'\u0421\u0422142\u041d.0000']
Pop: СТ142Н.0000

This works fine , I just write the string "CT142H.0000" by hand tiping with keyboard (Its the same code)

print ("################################")
foo = "CT142H.0000"
print(type(foo))
print("foo: "+foo)
foo_l = []
foo_l.append(foo)
print ("List: ")
print (foo_l)
print ("List decode: ")
print([x.decode("UTF-8") for x in foo_l])
print("Pop: "+foo_l.pop())

Print result:

################################
<type 'str'>
foo: CT142H.0000
List: 
['CT142H.0000']
List decode: 
[u'CT142H.0000']
Pop: CT142H.0000

Why python encode the first string when I append it into a list?

-----------------------------------------------

This is currently solved, I was worried about thats chars, I put the "result" in JSON and then in a website, finally in the website it works fine!

-----------------------------------------------

I found another solution, but no is a correct solution, cause you will have problems in some cases.

json.dumps(list, ensure_ascii=False)

Thanks for all!

Answer 1

Because even though they look like normal C / T / H characters they are actually not those characters.

They are Cyrillic characters.

С - Cyrillic Capital letter ES
Т - Cyrillic Capital letter TE
Н - Cyrillic Capital letter EN

You would need to check wherever you got those characters from , on why they are so.

On why they got printed using the \x.. representation, is because when you print a list , the __str__() method on list is called, but list itself calls __repr__() on its elements, and hence you get the internal representation of the strings. You would get similar result if you do -

print(repr(foo))

for the first case.