How do I display unicode value stored in a string variable using ord()

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 1:07 AM,  <wxjmfauth at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm aware of this (and all the blah blah blah you are
> explaining). This always the same song. Memory.
>
> Let me ask. Is Python an 'american" product for us-users
> or is it a tool for everybody [*]?
> Is there any reason why non ascii users are somehow penalized
> compared to ascii users?

Regardless of your own native language, "len" is the name of a popular
Python function. And "dict" is a well-used class. Both those names are
representable in ASCII, even if every quoted string in your code
requires more bytes to store.

And memory usage has significance in many other areas, too. CPU cache
utilization turns a space saving into a time saving. That's why
structure packing still exists, even though member alignment has other
advantages.

You'd be amazed how many non-USA strings still fit inside seven bits,
too. Are you appending a space to something? Splitting on newlines?
You'll have lots of strings that are going now to be space-optimized.
Of course, the performance gains from shortening some of the strings
may be offset by costs when comparing one-byte and multi-byte strings,
but presumably that's all been gone into in great detail elsewhere.

ChrisA