Further Reading

On Unicode in Python:

1. Python Unicode HOWTO
2. What’s New In Python 3: Text vs. Data Instead Of Unicode vs. 8-bit
3. PEP 261 explains how Python handles astral characters outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane (i.e. characters whose ordinal value is greater than 65535)

On Unicode in general:

1. The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer 2. Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)
2. On the Goodness of Unicode
3. On Character Strings
4. Characters vs. Bytes

On character encoding in other formats:

1. Character encoding in XML
2. Character encoding in HTML

On strings and string formatting:

1. string — Common string operations
2. Format String Syntax
3. Format Specification Mini-Language
4. PEP 3101: Advanced String Formatting