title: String with special characters don't work with Python and regex
body: <p>I'm working in this project and the special characters are driving me crazy! I've searched a lot of solutions around the foruns but they didn't fix my problem.</p>
  
  <p>I have this string with special characters:</p>
  
  <pre><code>['{"response":{"startRow":0,"endRow":5,"totalRows":5,"data":   [{"CODIGO":"72","DESCRICAO":"RECEITA INTRA-ORÇÁMENTÁRIAS DE CONTRIBUÇÕES","PREVISTA":225847716.0,"REALIZADA":165311075.58,"DIFERENCA":60536640.42,"R___":1.0},{"CODIGO":"76","DESCRICAO":"RECEITA  INTRA-ORÇAMENTÁRIAS DE SERVIÇOS","PREVISTA":22367493.0,"REALIZADA":3435363.08,"DIFERENCA":18932129.92,"R___":2.0},{"CODIGO":"77","DESCRICAO":"TRANSFERÊNCIAS  INTRA-ORÇAMENTÁRIAS CORRENTES","PREVISTA":1218252.0,"REALIZADA":0.0,"DIFERENCA":1218252.0,"R___":3.0},{"CODIGO":"71","DESCRICAO":"RECEITA TRIBUTÁRIA INTRA-ORÇAMENTÁRIA","PREVISTA":12000.0,"REALIZADA":0.0,"DIFERENCA":12000.0,"R___":4.0},{"CODIGO":"79","DESCRICAO":"OUTRAS RECEITAS INTRA-ORÇAMENTÁRIAS CORRENTES","PREVISTA":0.0,"REALIZADA":311785.30,"DIFERENCA":-311785.30,"R___":5.0}]}}']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I have to find some specifics strings using regex but I have to mantain the special characters.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried some things:</p>
  
  <pre><code>nkfd_form = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', unicode(html))
  print u"".join([c for c in nkfd_form if not unicodedata.combining(c)])
  
  print ' '.join(re.findall(r'(?:\w{3,}|-(?=\s))', html))
  print ' '.join(''.join([i if ord(i) &lt; 128 else ' ' for i in html]).split())
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And a lot of others things...</p>
  
  <p>But when I search using my pattern:</p>
  
  <pre><code>result = re.findall('(:\"[\w\-r"/" ]+"|:[\w\s.\-r"/" ]+)', html, re.U)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The special characters aren't correct. The result is something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>[':0', ':2', ':2', ':"94"', ':"DEDU', ':0.0', ':-2748373.25', ':2748373.25', ':1.0', ':"95"', ':"DEDU', ':-1421484000.0', ':-1062829156.22', ':-358654843.78', ':2.0']
  [':0', ':5', ':5', ':"72"', ':"RECEITA INTRA-OR', ':225847716.0', ':165311075.58', ':60536640.42', ':1.0', ':"76"', ':"RECEITA  INTRA-OR', ':22367493.0', ':3435363.08', ':18932129.92', ':2.0', ':"77"', ':"TRANSFER', ':1218252.0', ':0.0', ':1218252.0', ':3.0', ':"71"', ':"RECEITA TRIBUT', ':12000.0', ':0.0', ':12000.0', ':4.0', ':"79"', ':"OUTRAS RECEITAS INTRA-OR', ':0.0', ':311785.30', ':-311785.30', ':5.0']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It ignores the special characters!</p>
  
  <p>I need it because I'll write data in a CSV files and it wont work with this errors.</p>
  
  <p>A simple test using prompt:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; import re
  &gt;&gt;&gt; re.findall('\w+', 'Márquez', re.U)
  ['M\xc3', 'rquez']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What do I have to do to fix this?</p>