Python os.walk Make It Support Unicode/UTF-8?

Question

I have researched about this issue, It seems Python 2.7 default use is ASCII, I cant switch to python 3 (default Unicode) because of libraries

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- print u'порядке'

seems to print fine it will be ?????? without u but: print list(os.walk(ur'c:\somefoler')) returns \u0438\u0442... why not readable as first print? Also I use os.walk with variables I can't use it with ur I'm just trying to understand how could I make my following code work with any folders/files language I use os.walk + save to file both seems not to work always ???? where Cyrillic

def findit(self,root, exclude_files=[], exclude_dirs=[]):
    exclude_files = (fnmatch.translate(i) for i in exclude_files)
    exclude_files = '('+')|('.join(exclude_files)+')'
    exclude_files = re.compile(exclude_files)
    exclude_dirs = (os.path.normpath(i) for i in exclude_dirs)
    exclude_dirs = (os.path.normcase(i) for i in exclude_dirs)
    exclude_dirs = set(exclude_dirs)
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(root):
        if os.path.normpath(os.path.normcase(root)) in exclude_dirs:
            # exclude this dir and subdirectories
            dirs[:] = []
            continue
        for f in files:
            if not exclude_files.match(os.path.normcase(f)):
                yield os.path.join(root, f)

filelist = list(findit('c:\\',exclude_files = ['*.dll', '*.dat', '*.log', '*.exe'], exclude_dirs = ['c:/windows', 'c:/program files', 'c:/else']))

When it's a variable it seems I have to use .decode('utf-8')? Why not unicode such as u'var' if it exists and why there are many times exceptions it's not possible to convert had encountered it and saw a lot of answers with such errors I'm having hard time understanding it isn't there a way to make it just work?

Answer 1

try

root = ur'c:\somefoler'
for current,dirs,files in os.walk(root):
    for file in files:
        print file, repr(file)

you should see the proper thing(along side the repr that is used in the list) ... the problem is that when you print a list it prints a repr of its items