title: Python UTF-8 comparison
body: <pre><code>a = {"a":"çö"}
  b = "çö"
  a['a']
  &gt;&gt;&gt; '\xc3\xa7\xc3\xb6'
  
  b.decode('utf-8') == a['a']
  &gt;&gt;&gt; False
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What is going in there? </p>
  
  <p>edit= I'm sorry, it was my mistake. It is still False. I'm using Python 2.6 on Ubuntu 10.04.</p>