Python – Print a character based on Unicode name stored as a string variable

Question

I am trying to make a script that prints a set of characters based on their Unicode names (What I mean by 'Unicode name' is that I want to use the character's 'description', not the codepoint).

I understood that the standard way to do it for a single character is to do:

>>> print('\N{GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI}')
φ

My goal is to use a for loop that goes like this :

unicode_names = ['GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA', 'GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI']
for name in unicode_names:
    char_name = "{{{0}}}".format(name)
    print('\N' + char_name)

and the output would be:

α
φ

The problem is that whatever I try, (so far), I can't print unicode character using a name stored as as string variable, be it by string concatenation or by using a .format() method.

phi = '\N{GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI}'
phi_name = "{{{0}}}".format('GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI')
print(phi)
print(phi_name)
print('\N' + phi_name)

When I try I get this kind of SyntaxError:

    print('\N' + phi_name)
          ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 0-1: malformed \N character escape

Should I use f-strings, or other kind of special strings? Why print('\N{GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI}') is not interpreted the same as print('\N' + '{GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI}') ?

Answer 1

You're looking for the unicodedata.lookup function.

>>> import unicodedata
>>> unicodedata.lookup('GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI')
'φ'

Answer 2

Here's a demo of how to use unicodedata :

import unicodedata
unicode_names = ['GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA', 'GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI']
for name in unicode_names:
    print (name, unicodedata.lookup(name))

Answer 3

Does this work for you?

unicode_names = ['\N{GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}', '\N{GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI}']
for name in unicode_names:
    print(f"{name}")