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Unicode Gotchas in Python: NFC vs NFD, casefold, Homoglyph Lookalikes, Zero-Width Characters and Slugs

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Self-Hosting & Infra intermediate 6 min read $0.01 Updated 2026-10-20

Executed on Python 3.10: cafe with a precomposed e versus combining accent (4 vs 5 code points), NFC and NFKC results, uppercase of straße, casefold equality, zero-width space length, Cyrillic a lookalike, and a slug function that returns empty for Japanese.

Two strings that look identical compare unequal. Normalize with NFC, compare with casefold, detect Cyrillic lookalikes and invisible characters, and build ASCII slugs without losing meaning.

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