I am working on texts and have the left dot from an input text and right dot typed from a keyboard. However, in Python, they are not being treated as equal.
'․' == '.'
Out[870]: False
What could be a possible reason, and how can I recreate the left dot using the keyboard?
The dot on the left is not a period: it is a one dot leader Unicode character.
In Python, you can print it by using "\u2024":
print('\u2024')
This outputs:
․
You can use this for comparison purposes as well. If you do:
print('․' == '\u2024')
it will output
True
I would suggest going with str.maketrans in this case:
trans_table = str.maketrans({'․': '.'})
print(trans_table)
# prints `False`
print('․' == '.')
# now prints `True`
print('․'.translate(trans_table) == '.')
# or:
# '․'.replace('․', '.') == '.'
Basically, the visual representation of characters as we perceive them has no meaning from a machine's perspective.
Python compares the unicode values of those two values, and those obviously differ.
The dot on the left is "\u2024", whereas the dot on the right is "\u2e".