Python - Convert String to unicode characters

Last Updated : 15 Jul, 2025

Convert String to Unicode characters means transforming a string into its corresponding Unicode representations. Unicode is a standard for encoding characters, assigning a unique code point to every character.

For example:

  • string "A" has the Unicode code point U+0041.
  • string "你好" corresponds to U+4F60 and U+597D.

Using List Comprehension

List comprehension can split a string into individual characters by iterating through each character in the string.

Python 
s = "hello"
unicode = [ord(char) for char in s]

print(unicode)

Output
[104, 101, 108, 108, 111]

Using a For Loop

A for loop can iterate through each character in a string, appending each character to a list. This results in a list where every character from the string is an individual element.

Python 
s = "hello"
unicode = []
for char in s:
    unicode.append(ord(char))

print(unicode)

Output
[104, 101, 108, 108, 111]

Explanation:

  • for loop iterates through each character in the string s and uses the ord() function to get the Unicode value of each character.
  • These Unicode values are appended to the unicode list, resulting in [104, 101, 108, 108, 111] for the string "hello".

Joining Unicode Representations as a String

In this method, each character in the string is converted to its Unicode (ASCII) value using ord(char). A generator expression iterates through the string and str() converts the Unicode values to strings.

Python 
s = "hello"
unicode = ' '.join(str(ord(char)) for char in s)

print(unicode)

Output
104 101 108 108 111

Explanation:

  • generator expression str(ord(char)) for char in s converts each character in s to its Unicode value using ord() and then to a string.
  • ' '.join() method combines these Unicode string values into a single space-separated string, resulting in "104 101 108 108 111" for the input "hello"
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