Why does Python print unicode characters when the default encoding is ASCII?

Posted by mike on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by mike
Published on 2010-04-08T00:03:08Z Indexed on 2010/04/08 0:23 UTC
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python

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unicode

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ascii

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encoding

From the Python 2.6 shell:

>>> import sys
>>> print sys.getdefaultencoding()
ascii
>>> print u'\xe9'
é
>>>

I expected to have either some gibberish or an Error after the print statement, since the "é" character isn't part of ASCII and I haven't specified an encoding. I guess I don't understand what ASCII being the default encoding means.

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