"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal@lemburg.com> writes: > With Python 2.3 this prints: >=20 > =C3=83=C2=A4=C3=83=C2=B6=C3=83=C2=BC As Guido explains: No, it doesn't. Your terminal display this incorrectly. Please understand that Python cannot possibly know, at run-time, what encoding a byte string has. This is only possible for Unicode strings. Regards, Martin