URL 'special character' replacements

[Duncan Booth]

Claude Henchoz wrote:

> I have a huge list of URLs. These URLs all have ASCII codes for special
> characters, like "%20" for a space or "%21" for an exclamation mark.
> 
> I've already googled quite some time, but I have not been able to find
> any elegant way on how to replace these with their 'real' counterparts
> (" " and "!").
> 
> Of course, I could just replace(), but that seems to be a lot of work.
> 

urllib.unquote() or urllib.unquote_plus() as appropriate:

unquote( string) 

Replace "%xx" escapes by their single-character equivalent. 
Example: unquote('/%7Econnolly/') yields '/~connolly/'. 


unquote_plus( string) 

Like unquote(), but also replaces plus signs by spaces, as required for 
unquoting HTML form values.