Questions on XML

[Stefan Behnel]

Rami Chowdhury wrote:
>> I am using primarily UTF-8 based strings, like Hindi or Bengali. Can I
>> use Python to help me in this regard?
> 
> I can say from experience that Python on Windows (at least, Python 2.5
> on 32-bit Vista) works perfectly well with UTF-8 files containing
> Bangla. I have had trouble with working with the data in IDLE, however,
> which seems to prefer ASCII by default.

Defaults almost never work for encodings. You have to be explicit: add an
encoding declaration to the top of your source file if you use encoded
literal strings in your code; use the codecs module with a suitable
encoding to read encoded text files, and use an XML parser when reading XML.

Stefan