How to customize unidecode?

Question

I'm using unidecode module for replacing utf-8 characters. However, there are some characters, for example greek letters and some symbols like Å, which I want to preserve. How can I achieve this?

For example,

from unidecode import unidecode
test_str = 'α, Å ©'
unidecode(test_str)

gives the output a, A (c), while what I want is α, Å (c).

Answer 1

Run unidecode on each character individually. Have a whitelist set of characters that you use to bypass the unidecode.

>>> import string
>>> whitelist = set(string.printable + 'αÅ')
>>> test_str = 'α, Å ©'
>>> ''.join(ch if ch in whitelist else unidecode.unidecode(ch) for ch in test_str)
'α, Å (c)'