unctrl(c) 
 Return a string representation of the ASCII character c. If c 
is printable, this string is the character itself. ... 
 
from curses.ascii import unctrl 
>>> unctrl('a') 
'a' 
>>> unctrl('A') 
'^\x81' 
 
unctrl() is not working for the full printable charset. 
 
The Q&D fix is: 
 
def unctrl(c): 
+    if isprint(c): 
+    	return c 
    bits = _ctoi(c) 
    if bits == 0x7f: 
 
This bug has been confirmed in python 2.3 and 2.2 as 
distributed in Debian Linux.