Related
By most accounts, one ought to be able to change the encoding of a UTF-8
file to a Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) encoding by a trivial invocation of iconv such as:
iconv -c -f utf-8 -t ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT
However, this fails to deal with accented characters properly. Consider
for example:
$ echo $LC_ALL
C
$ cat Gonzalez.txt
González, M.
$ file Gonzalez.txt
Gonzalez.txt: UTF-8 Unicode text
$ iconv -c -f utf-8 -t ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT < Gonzalez.txt > out
$ file out
out: ASCII text
$ cat out
Gonzalez, M.
I've tried various variations of the above, but none properly handles
the accented "a", the point being that Latin-1 does have an accented "a".
Indeed, uconv does handle the situation properly:
$ uconv -x Any-Accents -f utf-8 -t l1 < Gonzalez.txt > out
$ file out
out: ISO-8859 text
Opening the file in emacs or
Sublime shows the accented "a" properly. Same thing using -x nfc.
Unfortunately, my target environment does not permit a solution using "uconv",
so I am looking for a simple solution using either iconv or Python3.
python3 attempts
My attempts using python3 so far have not been successful.
For example, the following:
import sys
import fileinput # allows file to be specified or else reads from STDIN
for line in fileinput.input():
l=line.encode("latin-1","replace")
sys.stdout.buffer.write(l)
produces:
Gonza?lez, M.
(That's a literal "?".)
I've tried various other Python3 possibilities, so far without success.
Please note that I've reviewed numerous SO questions on this topic, but the answers using iconv or Python3 do not handle Gonzalez.txt properly.
There are two ways to encode A WITH ACUTE ACCENT in Unicode.
One is to use a combined character, as illustrated here with Python's built-in ascii function:
>>> ascii('á')
"'\\xe1'"
But you can also use a combining accent following an unaccented letter a:
>>> ascii('á')
"'a\\u0301'"
Depending on the displaying applications, the two variants may look indistinguishable (in my terminal, the latter looks a bit odd with the accent being too large).
Now, Latin-1 has an accented letter a, but no combining accents, so that's why the acute becomes a question mark when encoding with errors="replace".
Fortunately, you can automatically switch between the two variants.
Without going into details (there are many details here), Unicode defined two normalization forms, called composed and decomposed, abbreviated NFC and NFD, respectively.
In Python, you can use the standard-library module unicodedata:
>>> import unicodedata as ud
>>> ascii(ud.normalize('NFD', 'á'))
"'a\\u0301'"
>>> ascii(ud.normalize('NFC', 'á'))
"'\\xe1'"
In your specific case, you can convert the input strings to NFC form, which will increase coverage of Latin-1 characters:
>>> n = 'Gonza\u0301lez, M.'
>>> print(n)
González, M.
>>> n.encode('latin1', errors='replace')
b'Gonza?lez, M.'
>>> ud.normalize('NFC', n).encode('latin1', errors='replace')
b'Gonz\xe1lez, M.'
When I try to print a Unicode string in a Windows console, I get an error .
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character ....
I assume this is because the Windows console does not accept Unicode-only characters. What's the best way around this?
Is there any way I can make Python automatically print a ? instead of failing in this situation?
Edit: I'm using Python 2.5.
Note: #LasseV.Karlsen answer with the checkmark is sort of outdated (from 2008). Please use the solutions/answers/suggestions below with care!!
#JFSebastian answer is more relevant as of today (6 Jan 2016).
Update: Python 3.6 implements PEP 528: Change Windows console encoding to UTF-8: the default console on Windows will now accept all Unicode characters. Internally, it uses the same Unicode API as the win-unicode-console package mentioned below. print(unicode_string) should just work now.
I get a UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character... error.
The error means that Unicode characters that you are trying to print can't be represented using the current (chcp) console character encoding. The codepage is often 8-bit encoding such as cp437 that can represent only ~0x100 characters from ~1M Unicode characters:
>>> u"\N{EURO SIGN}".encode('cp437')
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u20ac' in position 0:
character maps to
I assume this is because the Windows console does not accept Unicode-only characters. What's the best way around this?
Windows console does accept Unicode characters and it can even display them (BMP only) if the corresponding font is configured. WriteConsoleW() API should be used as suggested in #Daira Hopwood's answer. It can be called transparently i.e., you don't need to and should not modify your scripts if you use win-unicode-console package:
T:\> py -m pip install win-unicode-console
T:\> py -m run your_script.py
See What's the deal with Python 3.4, Unicode, different languages and Windows?
Is there any way I can make Python
automatically print a ? instead of failing in this situation?
If it is enough to replace all unencodable characters with ? in your case then you could set PYTHONIOENCODING envvar:
T:\> set PYTHONIOENCODING=:replace
T:\> python3 -c "print(u'[\N{EURO SIGN}]')"
[?]
In Python 3.6+, the encoding specified by PYTHONIOENCODING envvar is ignored for interactive console buffers unless PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSIOENCODING envvar is set to a non-empty string.
Note: This answer is sort of outdated (from 2008). Please use the solution below with care!!
Here is a page that details the problem and a solution (search the page for the text Wrapping sys.stdout into an instance):
PrintFails - Python Wiki
Here's a code excerpt from that page:
$ python -c 'import sys, codecs, locale; print sys.stdout.encoding; \
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter(locale.getpreferredencoding())(sys.stdout); \
line = u"\u0411\n"; print type(line), len(line); \
sys.stdout.write(line); print line'
UTF-8
<type 'unicode'> 2
Б
Б
$ python -c 'import sys, codecs, locale; print sys.stdout.encoding; \
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter(locale.getpreferredencoding())(sys.stdout); \
line = u"\u0411\n"; print type(line), len(line); \
sys.stdout.write(line); print line' | cat
None
<type 'unicode'> 2
Б
Б
There's some more information on that page, well worth a read.
Update: On Python 3.6 or later, printing Unicode strings to the console on Windows just works.
So, upgrade to recent Python and you're done. At this point I recommend using 2to3 to update your code to Python 3.x if needed, and just dropping support for Python 2.x. Note that there has been no security support for any version of Python before 3.7 (including Python 2.7) since December 2021.
If you really still need to support earlier versions of Python (including Python 2.7), you can use https://github.com/Drekin/win-unicode-console , which is based on, and uses the same APIs as the code in the answer that was previously linked here. (That link does include some information on Windows font configuration but I doubt it still applies to Windows 8 or later.)
Note: despite other plausible-sounding answers that suggest changing the code page to 65001, that did not work prior to Python 3.8. (It does kind-of work since then, but as pointed out above, you don't need to do so for Python 3.6+ anyway.) Also, changing the default encoding using sys.setdefaultencoding is (still) not a good idea.
If you're not interested in getting a reliable representation of the bad character(s) you might use something like this (working with python >= 2.6, including 3.x):
from __future__ import print_function
import sys
def safeprint(s):
try:
print(s)
except UnicodeEncodeError:
if sys.version_info >= (3,):
print(s.encode('utf8').decode(sys.stdout.encoding))
else:
print(s.encode('utf8'))
safeprint(u"\N{EM DASH}")
The bad character(s) in the string will be converted in a representation which is printable by the Windows console.
The below code will make Python output to console as UTF-8 even on Windows.
The console will display the characters well on Windows 7 but on Windows XP it will not display them well, but at least it will work and most important you will have a consistent output from your script on all platforms. You'll be able to redirect the output to a file.
Below code was tested with Python 2.6 on Windows.
#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
import codecs, sys
reload(sys)
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')
print sys.getdefaultencoding()
if sys.platform == 'win32':
try:
import win32console
except:
print "Python Win32 Extensions module is required.\n You can download it from https://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/ (x86 and x64 builds are available)\n"
exit(-1)
# win32console implementation of SetConsoleCP does not return a value
# CP_UTF8 = 65001
win32console.SetConsoleCP(65001)
if (win32console.GetConsoleCP() != 65001):
raise Exception ("Cannot set console codepage to 65001 (UTF-8)")
win32console.SetConsoleOutputCP(65001)
if (win32console.GetConsoleOutputCP() != 65001):
raise Exception ("Cannot set console output codepage to 65001 (UTF-8)")
#import sys, codecs
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter('utf8')(sys.stdout)
sys.stderr = codecs.getwriter('utf8')(sys.stderr)
print "This is an Е乂αmp١ȅ testing Unicode support using Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew and CJK code points.\n"
Just enter this code in command line before executing python script:
chcp 65001 & set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8
Like Giampaolo Rodolà's answer, but even more dirty: I really, really intend to spend a long time (soon) understanding the whole subject of encodings and how they apply to Windoze consoles,
For the moment I just wanted sthg which would mean my program would NOT CRASH, and which I understood ... and also which didn't involve importing too many exotic modules (in particular I'm using Jython, so half the time a Python module turns out not in fact to be available).
def pr(s):
try:
print(s)
except UnicodeEncodeError:
for c in s:
try:
print( c, end='')
except UnicodeEncodeError:
print( '?', end='')
NB "pr" is shorter to type than "print" (and quite a bit shorter to type than "safeprint")...!
Kind of related on the answer by J. F. Sebastian, but more direct.
If you are having this problem when printing to the console/terminal, then do this:
>set PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8
For Python 2 try:
print unicode(string, 'unicode-escape')
For Python 3 try:
import os
string = "002 Could've Would've Should've"
os.system('echo ' + string)
Or try win-unicode-console:
pip install win-unicode-console
py -mrun your_script.py
TL;DR:
print(yourstring.encode('ascii','replace').decode('ascii'))
I ran into this myself, working on a Twitch chat (IRC) bot. (Python 2.7 latest)
I wanted to parse chat messages in order to respond...
msg = s.recv(1024).decode("utf-8")
but also print them safely to the console in a human-readable format:
print(msg.encode('ascii','replace').decode('ascii'))
This corrected the issue of the bot throwing UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' errors and replaced the unicode characters with ?.
Python 3.6 windows7: There is several way to launch a python you could use the python console (which has a python logo on it) or the windows console (it's written cmd.exe on it).
I could not print utf8 characters in the windows console. Printing utf-8 characters throw me this error:
OSError: [winError 87] The paraneter is incorrect
Exception ignored in: (_io-TextIOwrapper name='(stdout)' mode='w' ' encoding='utf8')
OSError: [WinError 87] The parameter is incorrect
After trying and failing to understand the answer above I discovered it was only a setting problem. Right click on the top of the cmd console windows, on the tab font chose lucida console.
The cause of your problem is NOT the Win console not willing to accept Unicode (as it does this since I guess Win2k by default). It is the default system encoding. Try this code and see what it gives you:
import sys
sys.getdefaultencoding()
if it says ascii, there's your cause ;-)
You have to create a file called sitecustomize.py and put it under python path (I put it under /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages, but that is differen on Win - it is c:\python\lib\site-packages or something), with the following contents:
import sys
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')
and perhaps you might want to specify the encoding in your files as well:
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
import sys,time
Edit: more info can be found in excellent the Dive into Python book
Nowadays, the Windows console does not encounter this error, unless you redirect the output.
Here is an example Python script scratch_1.py:
s = "∞"
print(s)
If you run the script as follows, everything works as intended:
python scratch_1.py
∞
However, if you run the following, then you get the same error as in the question:
python scratch_1.py > temp.txt
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\Wok\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\PyCharmCE2022.2\scratches\scratch_1.py", line 3, in <module>
print(s)
File "C:\Users\Wok\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 19, in encode
return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_table)[0]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u221e' in position 0: character maps to <undefined>
To solve this issue with the suggestion present in the original question, i.e. by replacing the erroneous characters with question marks ?, one can proceed as follows:
s = "∞"
try:
print(s)
except UnicodeEncodeError:
output_str = s.encode("ascii", errors="replace").decode("ascii")
print(output_str)
It is important:
to call decode(), so that the type of the output is str instead of bytes,
with the same encoding, here "ascii", to avoid the creation of mojibake.
James Sulak asked,
Is there any way I can make Python automatically print a ? instead of failing in this situation?
Other solutions recommend we attempt to modify the Windows environment or replace Python's print() function. The answer below comes closer to fulfilling Sulak's request.
Under Windows 7, Python 3.5 can be made to print Unicode without throwing a UnicodeEncodeError as follows:
In place of:
print(text)
substitute:
print(str(text).encode('utf-8'))
Instead of throwing an exception, Python now displays unprintable Unicode characters as \xNN hex codes, e.g.:
Halmalo n\xe2\x80\x99\xc3\xa9tait plus qu\xe2\x80\x99un point noir
Instead of
Halmalo n’était plus qu’un point noir
Granted, the latter is preferable ceteris paribus, but otherwise the former is completely accurate for diagnostic messages. Because it displays Unicode as literal byte values the former may also assist in diagnosing encode/decode problems.
Note: The str() call above is needed because otherwise encode() causes Python to reject a Unicode character as a tuple of numbers.
The issue is with windows default encoding being set to cp1252, and need to be set to utf-8. (check PEP)
Check default encoding using:
import locale
locale.getpreferredencoding()
You can override locale settings
import os
if os.name == "nt":
import _locale
_locale._gdl_bak = _locale._getdefaultlocale
_locale._getdefaultlocale = (lambda *args: (_locale._gdl_bak()[0], 'utf8'))
referenced code from stack link
Ok, i want to print a string in my windows xp console.
There are several characters the console cant print, so i have to encode to my stdout.encoding which is 'cp437'. but printing the encoded string, the 'ß' is printed as '\xe1'. after decoding back to unicode and printing the string, i get the output i want. but this feels somewhat wrong. how is the correct way to print a string and get ? for non-printable characters?
>>>var
'Bla \u2013 großes'
>>>print(var)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u2013'
>>>var.encode('cp437', 'replace')
b'Bla ? gro\xe1es'
>>>print(var.encode('cp437', 'replace'))
b'Bla ? gro\xe1es'
>>>var.encode('cp437', 'replace').decode('cp437')
'Bla ? großes'
>>>print(var.encode('cp437', 'replace').decode('cp437'))
Bla ? großes
edit:
#Mark Ransom: since i print a lot this makes the code pretty bloated i feel :/
#eryksun: excactly what i was looking for. thanks a lot!
To print Unicode characters that can't be represented using the console codepage, you could use win-unicode-console Python package that uses Unicode API such as ReadConsoleW/WriteConsoleW() to read/write Unicode from/to Windows console directly:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import win_unicode_console
win_unicode_console.enable()
try:
print('Bla \u2013 großes')
finally:
win_unicode_console.disable()
save it to test_unicode.py file, and run it:
C:\> py test_unicode.py
You should see:
Bla – großes
As a preferred alternative, you could use run module (included in the package), to run an ordinary script with enabled Unicode support in Windows console:
C:\> py -m run unmodified_script_that_prints_unicode.py
To install win_unicode_console module, run:
C:\> pip install win-unicode-console
Make sure to select a font able to display Unicode characters in Windows console.
To save the output of a Python script to a file, you could use PYTHONIOENCODING envvar:
C:\> set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8:backslashreplace
C:\> py unmodified_script_that_prints_unicode.py >output_utf8.txt
Do not hardcode the character encoding of your environment inside your script, print Unicode instead. The examples show that the same script may be used to print to the console and to a file using different encodings and different methods.
An alternate solution is to not use the crippled Windows console for general unicode output. Tk text widgets (accessed as tkinter Text instances) handle all BMP chars as long as the selected font will.
Since Idle used tkinter, it can as well. Running an Idle editor file (call it tem.py) containing
print('Bla \u2013 großes')
prints the following in the Shell window.
Bla – großes
A file can be run through Idle from the console with -m and -r.
C:\>python -m idlelib -r c:/programs/python34/tem.py
This opens a shell window and prints the same as above. Or you can create your own tk window with Label or Text widget.
When I try to print a Unicode string in a Windows console, I get an error .
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character ....
I assume this is because the Windows console does not accept Unicode-only characters. What's the best way around this?
Is there any way I can make Python automatically print a ? instead of failing in this situation?
Edit: I'm using Python 2.5.
Note: #LasseV.Karlsen answer with the checkmark is sort of outdated (from 2008). Please use the solutions/answers/suggestions below with care!!
#JFSebastian answer is more relevant as of today (6 Jan 2016).
Update: Python 3.6 implements PEP 528: Change Windows console encoding to UTF-8: the default console on Windows will now accept all Unicode characters. Internally, it uses the same Unicode API as the win-unicode-console package mentioned below. print(unicode_string) should just work now.
I get a UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character... error.
The error means that Unicode characters that you are trying to print can't be represented using the current (chcp) console character encoding. The codepage is often 8-bit encoding such as cp437 that can represent only ~0x100 characters from ~1M Unicode characters:
>>> u"\N{EURO SIGN}".encode('cp437')
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u20ac' in position 0:
character maps to
I assume this is because the Windows console does not accept Unicode-only characters. What's the best way around this?
Windows console does accept Unicode characters and it can even display them (BMP only) if the corresponding font is configured. WriteConsoleW() API should be used as suggested in #Daira Hopwood's answer. It can be called transparently i.e., you don't need to and should not modify your scripts if you use win-unicode-console package:
T:\> py -m pip install win-unicode-console
T:\> py -m run your_script.py
See What's the deal with Python 3.4, Unicode, different languages and Windows?
Is there any way I can make Python
automatically print a ? instead of failing in this situation?
If it is enough to replace all unencodable characters with ? in your case then you could set PYTHONIOENCODING envvar:
T:\> set PYTHONIOENCODING=:replace
T:\> python3 -c "print(u'[\N{EURO SIGN}]')"
[?]
In Python 3.6+, the encoding specified by PYTHONIOENCODING envvar is ignored for interactive console buffers unless PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSIOENCODING envvar is set to a non-empty string.
Note: This answer is sort of outdated (from 2008). Please use the solution below with care!!
Here is a page that details the problem and a solution (search the page for the text Wrapping sys.stdout into an instance):
PrintFails - Python Wiki
Here's a code excerpt from that page:
$ python -c 'import sys, codecs, locale; print sys.stdout.encoding; \
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter(locale.getpreferredencoding())(sys.stdout); \
line = u"\u0411\n"; print type(line), len(line); \
sys.stdout.write(line); print line'
UTF-8
<type 'unicode'> 2
Б
Б
$ python -c 'import sys, codecs, locale; print sys.stdout.encoding; \
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter(locale.getpreferredencoding())(sys.stdout); \
line = u"\u0411\n"; print type(line), len(line); \
sys.stdout.write(line); print line' | cat
None
<type 'unicode'> 2
Б
Б
There's some more information on that page, well worth a read.
Update: On Python 3.6 or later, printing Unicode strings to the console on Windows just works.
So, upgrade to recent Python and you're done. At this point I recommend using 2to3 to update your code to Python 3.x if needed, and just dropping support for Python 2.x. Note that there has been no security support for any version of Python before 3.7 (including Python 2.7) since December 2021.
If you really still need to support earlier versions of Python (including Python 2.7), you can use https://github.com/Drekin/win-unicode-console , which is based on, and uses the same APIs as the code in the answer that was previously linked here. (That link does include some information on Windows font configuration but I doubt it still applies to Windows 8 or later.)
Note: despite other plausible-sounding answers that suggest changing the code page to 65001, that did not work prior to Python 3.8. (It does kind-of work since then, but as pointed out above, you don't need to do so for Python 3.6+ anyway.) Also, changing the default encoding using sys.setdefaultencoding is (still) not a good idea.
If you're not interested in getting a reliable representation of the bad character(s) you might use something like this (working with python >= 2.6, including 3.x):
from __future__ import print_function
import sys
def safeprint(s):
try:
print(s)
except UnicodeEncodeError:
if sys.version_info >= (3,):
print(s.encode('utf8').decode(sys.stdout.encoding))
else:
print(s.encode('utf8'))
safeprint(u"\N{EM DASH}")
The bad character(s) in the string will be converted in a representation which is printable by the Windows console.
The below code will make Python output to console as UTF-8 even on Windows.
The console will display the characters well on Windows 7 but on Windows XP it will not display them well, but at least it will work and most important you will have a consistent output from your script on all platforms. You'll be able to redirect the output to a file.
Below code was tested with Python 2.6 on Windows.
#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
import codecs, sys
reload(sys)
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')
print sys.getdefaultencoding()
if sys.platform == 'win32':
try:
import win32console
except:
print "Python Win32 Extensions module is required.\n You can download it from https://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/ (x86 and x64 builds are available)\n"
exit(-1)
# win32console implementation of SetConsoleCP does not return a value
# CP_UTF8 = 65001
win32console.SetConsoleCP(65001)
if (win32console.GetConsoleCP() != 65001):
raise Exception ("Cannot set console codepage to 65001 (UTF-8)")
win32console.SetConsoleOutputCP(65001)
if (win32console.GetConsoleOutputCP() != 65001):
raise Exception ("Cannot set console output codepage to 65001 (UTF-8)")
#import sys, codecs
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter('utf8')(sys.stdout)
sys.stderr = codecs.getwriter('utf8')(sys.stderr)
print "This is an Е乂αmp١ȅ testing Unicode support using Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew and CJK code points.\n"
Just enter this code in command line before executing python script:
chcp 65001 & set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8
Like Giampaolo Rodolà's answer, but even more dirty: I really, really intend to spend a long time (soon) understanding the whole subject of encodings and how they apply to Windoze consoles,
For the moment I just wanted sthg which would mean my program would NOT CRASH, and which I understood ... and also which didn't involve importing too many exotic modules (in particular I'm using Jython, so half the time a Python module turns out not in fact to be available).
def pr(s):
try:
print(s)
except UnicodeEncodeError:
for c in s:
try:
print( c, end='')
except UnicodeEncodeError:
print( '?', end='')
NB "pr" is shorter to type than "print" (and quite a bit shorter to type than "safeprint")...!
Kind of related on the answer by J. F. Sebastian, but more direct.
If you are having this problem when printing to the console/terminal, then do this:
>set PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8
For Python 2 try:
print unicode(string, 'unicode-escape')
For Python 3 try:
import os
string = "002 Could've Would've Should've"
os.system('echo ' + string)
Or try win-unicode-console:
pip install win-unicode-console
py -mrun your_script.py
TL;DR:
print(yourstring.encode('ascii','replace').decode('ascii'))
I ran into this myself, working on a Twitch chat (IRC) bot. (Python 2.7 latest)
I wanted to parse chat messages in order to respond...
msg = s.recv(1024).decode("utf-8")
but also print them safely to the console in a human-readable format:
print(msg.encode('ascii','replace').decode('ascii'))
This corrected the issue of the bot throwing UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' errors and replaced the unicode characters with ?.
Python 3.6 windows7: There is several way to launch a python you could use the python console (which has a python logo on it) or the windows console (it's written cmd.exe on it).
I could not print utf8 characters in the windows console. Printing utf-8 characters throw me this error:
OSError: [winError 87] The paraneter is incorrect
Exception ignored in: (_io-TextIOwrapper name='(stdout)' mode='w' ' encoding='utf8')
OSError: [WinError 87] The parameter is incorrect
After trying and failing to understand the answer above I discovered it was only a setting problem. Right click on the top of the cmd console windows, on the tab font chose lucida console.
The cause of your problem is NOT the Win console not willing to accept Unicode (as it does this since I guess Win2k by default). It is the default system encoding. Try this code and see what it gives you:
import sys
sys.getdefaultencoding()
if it says ascii, there's your cause ;-)
You have to create a file called sitecustomize.py and put it under python path (I put it under /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages, but that is differen on Win - it is c:\python\lib\site-packages or something), with the following contents:
import sys
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')
and perhaps you might want to specify the encoding in your files as well:
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
import sys,time
Edit: more info can be found in excellent the Dive into Python book
Nowadays, the Windows console does not encounter this error, unless you redirect the output.
Here is an example Python script scratch_1.py:
s = "∞"
print(s)
If you run the script as follows, everything works as intended:
python scratch_1.py
∞
However, if you run the following, then you get the same error as in the question:
python scratch_1.py > temp.txt
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\Wok\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\PyCharmCE2022.2\scratches\scratch_1.py", line 3, in <module>
print(s)
File "C:\Users\Wok\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 19, in encode
return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_table)[0]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u221e' in position 0: character maps to <undefined>
To solve this issue with the suggestion present in the original question, i.e. by replacing the erroneous characters with question marks ?, one can proceed as follows:
s = "∞"
try:
print(s)
except UnicodeEncodeError:
output_str = s.encode("ascii", errors="replace").decode("ascii")
print(output_str)
It is important:
to call decode(), so that the type of the output is str instead of bytes,
with the same encoding, here "ascii", to avoid the creation of mojibake.
James Sulak asked,
Is there any way I can make Python automatically print a ? instead of failing in this situation?
Other solutions recommend we attempt to modify the Windows environment or replace Python's print() function. The answer below comes closer to fulfilling Sulak's request.
Under Windows 7, Python 3.5 can be made to print Unicode without throwing a UnicodeEncodeError as follows:
In place of:
print(text)
substitute:
print(str(text).encode('utf-8'))
Instead of throwing an exception, Python now displays unprintable Unicode characters as \xNN hex codes, e.g.:
Halmalo n\xe2\x80\x99\xc3\xa9tait plus qu\xe2\x80\x99un point noir
Instead of
Halmalo n’était plus qu’un point noir
Granted, the latter is preferable ceteris paribus, but otherwise the former is completely accurate for diagnostic messages. Because it displays Unicode as literal byte values the former may also assist in diagnosing encode/decode problems.
Note: The str() call above is needed because otherwise encode() causes Python to reject a Unicode character as a tuple of numbers.
The issue is with windows default encoding being set to cp1252, and need to be set to utf-8. (check PEP)
Check default encoding using:
import locale
locale.getpreferredencoding()
You can override locale settings
import os
if os.name == "nt":
import _locale
_locale._gdl_bak = _locale._getdefaultlocale
_locale._getdefaultlocale = (lambda *args: (_locale._gdl_bak()[0], 'utf8'))
referenced code from stack link
I'm trying to call certutil from inside python. However I need to use quotation marks and have been unable to do so. My code is as follows:
import subprocess
output= subprocess.Popen(("certutil.exe", "-view", '-restrict "NotAfter <= now+30:00, NotAfter >= now+00:00"' ), stdout=subprocess.PIPE).stdout
for line in output:
print(line)
output.close()
I thought the single quotes would allow me to use double quotes inside the string.
Also I have tried using double quotes with the escape character (\"), however I keep getting the same error:
Unknown arg: -restrict \\NotAfter\r\n'
For some reason it seems to be translating " into \\.
Can anyone give insight as to why and how to fix it?
I do not have Python in any version installed. But according to answer on How do I used 2 quotes in os.system? PYTHON and documentation of subprocess, subprocess handles requirement for double quotes on arguments with space automatically.
So you should need to use simply:
import subprocess
output= subprocess.Popen(("certutil.exe", "-view", "-restrict", "NotAfter <= now+30:00, NotAfter >= now+00:00" ), stdout=subprocess.PIPE).stdout
for line in output:
print(line)
output.close()
And the command line used on calling certutil is:
certutil.exe -view -restrict "NotAfter <= now+30:00, NotAfter >= now+00:00"
output=subprocess.Popen(("certutil.exe -view -restrict \"NotAfter<=now+30:00,NotAfter>=now+00:00\"" ),stdout=subprocess.PIPE).stdout
This is what was needed. I was passing the command as a command with 2 args. What I should have been doing was passing it as one big command with 2 parameters.