Novice: replacing strings with unicode variables in a list

[aine_canby at yahoo.com]

Fredrik Lundh skrev:

> Diez B. Roggisch wrote:
>
> > Please provide the full script, and the desired input - then we might be
> > able to help you.
>
> the full *traceback* would pretty useful, too:
>
> http://effbot.org/pyfaq/tutor-i-need-help-im-getting-an-error-in-my-program-what-should-i-do.htm
>
> my guess is that the OP left out the print statement that causing the error, and the
> traceback lines that pointed to that print statement:
>
> > more test.py
> uni = u"p\x95l"
> print uni
>
> > python test.py
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "test.py", line 2, in <module>
>     print uni
>   File "C:\python25\lib\encodings\cp850.py", line 12, in encode
>     return codecs.charmap_encode(input,errors,encoding_map)
> UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character u'\x95' in position 1
> : character maps to <undefined>
>
> </F>

Thanks for the replies. OK heres the full code I'm using now -

compare = u"Äis"
print compare

str = raw_input("Enter music:")
words = str.split()

uniList=[]
for word in words:
	uni=unicode(word,'latin-1')
	uniList.append(uni)

print uniList[0]

if(compare!=uniList[0]):
	print "Not the same: " + compare + " " + uniList[0]

This gives the following error -

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "test.py", line 14, in <module>
    print uniList[0]
  File "C:\Python25\lib\encodings\cp850.py", line 12, in encode
    return codecs.charmap_encode(input,errors,encoding_map)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character u'\x8e' in
position 0
: character maps to <undefined>

How come I can print compare but not uniList[0]? What encoding is being
used to store compare? How can I print out the raw bytes stored in
compare and uniList[0]?

Thanks again for your help,

Aine.