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Title: Working With ASCII and the Python String Module (Video) – Real Python

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Description: In the previous lesson, I introduced you to characters, character points, and the encoding thereof. In this lesson, I’m going to dive further into ASCII and its support in the Python string module. ASCII became one of most common standards for…

Open Graph Description: In the previous lesson, I introduced you to characters, character points, and the encoding thereof. In this lesson, I’m going to dive further into ASCII and its support in the Python string module. ASCII became one of most common standards for…

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00:00https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=0.51
In the previous lesson, I introduced you to characters,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=0.51
character points, and the encoding thereof. In this lesson,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=2.76
I’m going to dive further into ASCII and its support in the Python stringhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=5.79
module.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=8.97
00:10https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=10.68
ASCII became one of most common standards for encoding because it was used byhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=10.68
PCs early on. ASCII only encodes the basic Latin alphabet.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=13.92
There are no accented characters. The original encoding is 7 bits,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=18.6
so 128 characters in total, and it can be divided up into a series of groups.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=22.83
00:28https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=28.44
The first 32 are control characters. They’re non-printable.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=28.44
These include things like printer controls, the bell sound, and carriage return.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=32.07
The next chunk is the space, a series of symbols, and numbers.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=37.11
00:42https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=42.06
After that comes capital letters, a few more symbols, lower letters,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=42.06
a few more symbols, and then finally, the character for deletion.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=47.04
The original ASCII was a 7-bit encoding,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=51.27
and so went from 0 to 127. PCs used 8-bit bytes,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=53.64
so oftentimes, the leading 8th bit was used for parity checks duringhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=58.59
transmission.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=62.37
01:04https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=64.17
It didn’t take long to figure out that ASCII was insufficient to handle otherhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=64.17
kinds of languages.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=67.83
Accented characters for Latin and Germanic languages were added by extendinghttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=69.36
ASCII to use the full 8 bits. This wasn’t the only extension.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=73.17
01:17https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=77.97
Another one was called Latin-1. Latin-1 was then modified by Microsoft tohttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=77.97
create Windows-1252. Latin-1 and 1252 are very,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=83.01
very close,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=87.48
which causes all sorts of problems because it looks like you can interchangehttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=88.74
them, but every once in a while,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=92.07
you’re going to run into a character difference.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=93.3
01:36https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=96.24
If you’re wondering why I’m spending so much time on ASCII when this is a coursehttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=96.24
on Unicode, well,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=99.81
it turns out that Unicode, Latin-1, Windows-1252—https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=101.16
they all use the first 128 code points from ASCII.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=105.63
01:50https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=110.58
So, if you’re sticking with the characters that I described in the previoushttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=110.58
screen, then the encoding is compatible across all four of these standards.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=114.48
Although Unicode is quickly becoming the defacto encoding, due to history,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=119.34
you still run into other encodings quite frequently.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=123.24
02:06https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=126.42
The web is one of those places.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=126.42
Latin-1 was the original default encoding for documents delivered over HTTP.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=128.639
Anything with a MIME type of text/, unless you specify otherwise, is using Latin-1.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=134.1
02:19https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=139.26
Of course, standards are, well, not always so standard,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=139.26
so depending on what web server you were using and what browsers you were using,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=144.54
there were subtle differences to this. In order to get around this, browsershttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=148.26
try to guess the encoding. This works with a varying degree of success,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=152.19
although they’ve gotten much better in the recent past. Old coders like me usedhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=155.91
to spend a lot of time on Slashdot. If you’re not familiar,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=160.44
this is a website that aggregates technology news. It’s been around since 1997https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=163.2
and I’m pretty sure some of the code in there is still the original code. It’shttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=168.96
notorious for not supporting Unicode,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=173.04
and you can see this in a comment that I’ve clipped here.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=175.2
02:58https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=178.71
This isn’t because a cat ran across this person’s keyboard—https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=178.71
this is because the apostrophe has been interpreted in a different encoding andhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=181.81
you get a whole bunch of garbage instead of the poster’s intent.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=186.46
03:10https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=190.15
You don’t see them as often anymore,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=190.15
but in the early 2000s, frequently web pages would be littered with thesehttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=192.01
little question marks and blocks. Before browsers got better at guessing thehttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=195.43
encoding, this was the character that was shown if the character on the pagehttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=198.76
couldn’t be shown in the browser’s current encoding. Thankfully,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=202.69
this problem is mostly solvedhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=206.59
now. The Python string module defines a whole bunch of constants that are usefulhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=208.21
for looking at ASCII. Let’s take a look at a few of them.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=213.13
03:36https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=216.61
string.whitespace defines tab,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=216.61
newline, and others to be whitespace characters. ascii_lowercasehttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=218.56
and ascii_uppercase show the alphabet letters.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=223.21
03:46https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=226.03
ascii_letters is the combination of those two. digits are the numbers.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=226.03
hexdigits are the numbershttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=231.43
plus the first few characters in either lower or upper case. octdigits are thehttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=232.99
first eight numbers. punctuation symbols.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=238.6
04:02https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=242.08
And finally, string.printable shows all of these combined.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=242.08
04:08https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=248.05
Let’s crack open the REPL and take a look at this in practice.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=248.05
I’m going to import string so I can get access to those constants that I justhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=250.96
showed you. Type in a question.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=254.83
04:20https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=260.2
Now, let’s say you wanted to pull the punctuation and space off the right-handhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=260.2
side. The .rstrip() method will pull characters out of a string.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=263.38
04:28https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=268.99
If you pass in values to .rstrip(),https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=268.99
it’ll tell it what characters to pull. Passing in string.punctuation andhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=270.91
string.whitespace will pull all of the question marks and the exclamation markshttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=275.8
and the space between them off the right-hand side of that string.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=279.94
04:45https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=285.22
You can use the .isascii() method to see whether or not a value is ASCII.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=285.22
04:51https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=291.28
You can use the .isprintable() method to see whether or not it contains printablehttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=291.28
characters. One word of caution: .isprintable()https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=294.67
doesn’t actually use string.printable,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=298.15
so there’s a subtle difference between the two.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=300.64
05:06https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=306.64
.isprintable() on blanks is False,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=306.64
even though string.printable includes the tab and newline characters.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=309.58
05:13https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=313.81
This is because .isprintable() is an older method that tells you whether or nothttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=313.81
something is printable within the repr() representation. That repr() representationhttps://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=317.47
doesn’t actually include tabs and newlines,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=323.26
so you get into the strange situation where string.printable—https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=326.08
which does include those characters—https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=329.74
05:33https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=333.7
isn’t printable. Before digging into Unicode and how it’s represented,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=333.7
you’re going to need a little bit of computer science math.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=339.1
So in the next episode,https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=341.98
I’ll be reviewing bits, bytes, octal, and hex representations.https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/#t=343.24
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Working With ASCII and the Python String Module 05:49 https://realpython.com/videos/ascii-python-string-module/
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Combining Characters 05:40 https://realpython.com/lessons/combining-characters/
Using Built-In Functions 05:38 https://realpython.com/lessons/built-in-functions/
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