<s>[INST] How to check if a string in Python is in ASCII? I want to I check whether a string is in ASCII or not.
I am aware of ord(), however when I try ord('Ã©'), I have TypeError: ord() expected a character, but string of length 2 found. I understood it is caused by the way I built Python (as explained in ord()'s documentation). 
Is there another way to check?
 [/INST] I think you are not  asking the right question--
A string in python has no property corresponding to 'ascii', utf-8, or any other encoding. The source of your string (whether you read it from a file, input from a keyboard, etc.) may have encoded a unicode string in ascii to produce your string, but that's where you need to go for an answer.
Perhaps the question you can ask is: "Is this string the result of encoding a unicode string in ascii?" -- This you can answer
    by trying:
try:
    mystring.decode('ascii')
except UnicodeDecodeError:
    print "it was not a ascii-encoded unicode string"
else:
    print "It may have been an ascii-encoded unicode string"

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