For loop (adding strings to a list trouble)

[eoins]

When I run the following code, the user is asked 3 times "Name a hobby: ", so I enter fishing, hiking, coding then hit enter. When I then print the list hobbies, each item in the list has a u" in it. What is this and what am I doing that is putting it there?

hobbies = []

for i in range(3):
  hobby = raw_input("Name a hobby: ")
  hobbies.append(hobby)
  
print hobbies

The result of running the code is the following:

Name a hobby: fishing
Name a hobby: hiking
Name a hobby: coding
[u'fishing', u'hiking', u'coding']

[Larz60+]

the u stands for Unicode.
My suggestion to eliminate this (and many other Unicode bothers that appear) is to upgrade to python 3. Python 3.7.0 to be more precise.

[volcano63]

'u' prefix shows only when you don't print a string object directly, and print the containing object. Printing string elements of a list one-by-one will eliminate this issue - or

print ', '.join(hobbies) 

Either way, regardless of the Python version you use, printing lists "as is" adds redundant symbols like square brackets and quotes to your output