Run this: >>> unicodedata.category('\N{MINUS SIGN}') 'Sm' There you go. No need to thank me for breaking your code. Also, nobody has yet commented on

Run this: >>> unicodedata.category('\N{MINUS SIGN}') 'Sm' There you go. No need to thank me for breaking your code. Also, nobody has yet commented on the fact that the author is also doing PDF text extraction. That's yet another area where a lot of fuzziness needs to be applied. My confidence in the author's product greatly decreased after reading this post.