The unicodedata module

(New in 2.0) This module contains Unicode character properties, such as character categories, decomposition data, and numerical values.

Example: Using the unicodedata module

# File: unicodedata-example-1.py

import unicodedata

for char in [u"A", u"-", u"1", u"\N{LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS}"]:
    print repr(char),
    print unicodedata.category(char),
    print repr(unicodedata.decomposition(char)),
    print unicodedata.decimal(char, None),
    print unicodedata.numeric(char, None)

$ python unicodedata-example-1.py
u'A' Lu '' None None
u'-' Pd '' None None
u'1' Nd '' 1 1.0
u'Ö' Lu '004F 0308' None None

Note that in Python 2.0, properties for CJK ideographs and Hangul syllables are missing. This affects characters in the range 0x3400-0x4DB5, 0x4E00-0x9FA5, and 0xAC00-D7A3. The first character in each range has correct properties, so you can work around this problem by simply mapping each character to the beginning:

def remap(char):
    # fix for broken unicode property database in Python 2.0
    c = ord(char)
    if 0x3400 <= c <= 0x4DB5:
        return unichr(0x3400)
    if 0x4E00 <= c <= 0x9FA5:
        return unichr(0x4E00)
    if 0xAC00 <= c <= 0xD7A3:
        return unichr(0xAC00)
    return char

This bug has been fixed in Python 2.1.