Python - Decode ISO/UTF Character Encodings

Given a string of the format:

=?iso-2022-jp?B?GyRCO2QkTzYyJG0kNyQkSjg7ek5zJEckOSEqGyhCIBskQjlsMjshKhsoQg?=

This should decode it properly:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

import re import base64 uniString="=?iso-2022-jp?B?GyRCO2QkTzYyJG0kNyQkSjg7ek5zJEckOSEqGyhCIBskQjlsMjshKhsoQg?=" charset=re.search("^=\?(.*?)\?", uniString).group(1) b64String=re.search("\?[Bb]\?(.*?)[?=]", uniString).group(1) print b64String missing_padding = len(b64String) % 4 if missing_padding != 0: b64String += b'='* (4 - missing_padding) dec=base64.b64decode(b64String) print dec.decode(charset)

It decodes into "私は恐ろしい文字列です！ 轟音！", which according to Google Translate, is "I am a fearsome string!  Roar!"