UTF in Python Regex

I'm aware that Python 3 fixes a lot of UTF issues, I am not however able to use Python 3, I am using 2.5.1

I'm trying to regex a document but the document has UTF hyphens in it – rather than -. Python can't match these and if I put them in the regex it throws a wobbly.

How can I force Python to use a UTF string or in some way match a character such as that?

Thanks for your help

Is Python a UTF-8 string?

UTF-8 is one of the most commonly used encodings, and Python often defaults to using it. UTF stands for “Unicode Transformation Format”, and the '8' means that 8-bit values are used in the encoding.

How do I decode a UTF-8 string in Python?

Use bytes.decode(encoding) with encoding as "utf8" to decode a UTF-8-encoded byte string bytes .

Can you do RegEx in Python?

Python, Java, and Perl all support regex functionality, as do most Unix tools and many text editors.

You have to escape the character in question (–) and put a u in front of the string literal to make it a unicode string.

So, for example, this: