We Keep Coding

Accented characters in Python 2.7 [duplicate]

I'm running a recent Linux system where all my locales are UTF-8:
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
...
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
Now I want to write UTF-8 encoded content to the console.
Right now Python uses UTF-8 for the FS encoding but sticks to ASCII for the default encoding :-(
>>> import sys
>>> sys.getdefaultencoding()
'ascii'
>>> sys.getfilesystemencoding()
'UTF-8'
I thought the best (clean) way to do this was setting the PYTHONIOENCODING environment variable. But it seems that Python ignores it. At least on my system I keep getting ascii as default encoding, even after setting the envvar.
# tried this in ~/.bashrc and ~/.profile (also sourced them)
# and on the commandline before running python
export PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8
If I do the following at the start of a script, it works though:
>>> import sys
>>> reload(sys) # to enable `setdefaultencoding` again
<module 'sys' (built-in)>
>>> sys.setdefaultencoding("UTF-8")
>>> sys.getdefaultencoding()
'UTF-8'
But that approach seems unclean. So, what's a good way to accomplish this?
Workaround
Instead of changing the default encoding - which is not a good idea (see mesilliac's answer) - I just wrap sys.stdout with a StreamWriter like this:
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter(locale.getpreferredencoding())(sys.stdout)
See this gist for a small utility function, that handles it.

It seems accomplishing this is not recommended.
Fedora suggested using the system locale as the default,
but apparently this breaks other things.
Here's a quote from the mailing-list discussion:
The only supported default encodings in Python are:
Python 2.x: ASCII
Python 3.x: UTF-8
If you change these, you are on your own and strange things will
start to happen. The default encoding does not only affect
the translation between Python and the outside world, but also
all internal conversions between 8-bit strings and Unicode.
Hacks like what's happening in the pango module (setting the
default encoding to 'utf-8' by reloading the site module in
order to get the sys.setdefaultencoding() API back) are just
downright wrong and will cause serious problems since Unicode
objects cache their default encoded representation.
Please don't enable the use of a locale based default encoding.
If all you want to achieve is getting the encodings of
stdout and stdin correctly setup for pipes, you should
instead change the .encoding attribute of those (only).
--
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

This is how I do it:
#!/usr/bin/python2.7 -S
import sys
sys.setdefaultencoding("utf-8")
import site
Note the -S in the bangline. That tells Python to not automatically import the site module. The site module is what sets the default encoding and the removes the method so it can't be set again. But will honor what is already set.

How to print UTF-8 encoded text to the console in Python < 3?
print u"some unicode text \N{EURO SIGN}"
print b"some utf-8 encoded bytestring \xe2\x82\xac".decode('utf-8')
i.e., if you have a Unicode string then print it directly. If you have
a bytestring then convert it to Unicode first.
Your locale settings (LANG, LC_CTYPE) indicate a utf-8 locale and
therefore (in theory) you could print a utf-8 bytestring directly and it
should be displayed correctly in your terminal (if terminal settings
are consistent with the locale settings and they should be) but you
should avoid it: do not hardcode the character encoding of your
environment inside your script; print Unicode directly instead.
There are many wrong assumptions in your question.
You do not need to set PYTHONIOENCODING with your locale settings,
to print Unicode to the terminal. utf-8 locale supports all Unicode characters i.e., it works as is.
You do not need the workaround sys.stdout =
codecs.getwriter(locale.getpreferredencoding())(sys.stdout). It may
break if some code (that you do not control) does need to print bytes
and/or it may break while
printing Unicode to Windows console (wrong codepage, can't print undecodable characters). Correct locale settings and/or PYTHONIOENCODING envvar are enough. Also, if you need to replace sys.stdout then use io.TextIOWrapper() instead of codecs module like win-unicode-console package does.
sys.getdefaultencoding() is unrelated to your locale settings and to
PYTHONIOENCODING. Your assumption that setting PYTHONIOENCODING
should change sys.getdefaultencoding() is incorrect. You should
check sys.stdout.encoding instead.
sys.getdefaultencoding() is not used when you print to the
console. It may be used as a fallback on Python 2 if stdout is
redirected to a file/pipe unless PYTHOHIOENCODING is set:
$ python2 -c'import sys; print(sys.stdout.encoding)'
UTF-8
$ python2 -c'import sys; print(sys.stdout.encoding)' | cat
None
$ PYTHONIOENCODING=utf8 python2 -c'import sys; print(sys.stdout.encoding)' | cat
utf8
Do not call sys.setdefaultencoding("UTF-8"); it may corrupt your
data silently and/or break 3rd-party modules that do not expect
it. Remember sys.getdefaultencoding() is used to convert bytestrings
(str) to/from unicode in Python 2 implicitly e.g., "a" + u"b". See also,
the quote in #mesilliac's answer.

If the program does not display the appropriate characters on the screen,
i.e., invalid symbol,
run the program with the following command line:
PYTHONIOENCODING=utf8 python3 yourprogram.py
Or the following, if your program is a globally installed module:
PYTHONIOENCODING=utf8 yourprogram
On some platforms as Cygwin (mintty.exe terminal) with Anaconda Python (or Python 3), simply run export PYTHONIOENCODING=utf8 and
later run the program does not work,
and you are required to always do every time PYTHONIOENCODING=utf8 yourprogram to run the program correctly.
On Linux, in case of sudo, you can try to do pass the -E argument to export the user variables to the sudo process:
export PYTHONIOENCODING=utf8
sudo -E python yourprogram.py
If you try this and it did no work, you will need to enter on a sudo shell:
sudo /bin/bash
PYTHONIOENCODING=utf8 yourprogram
Related:
How to print UTF-8 encoded text to the console in Python < 3?
Changing default encoding of Python?
Forcing UTF-8 over cp1252 (Python3)
Permanently set Python path for Anaconda within Cygwin
https://superuser.com/questions/1374339/what-does-the-e-in-sudo-e-do
Why bash -c 'var=5 printf "$var"' does not print 5?
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/296838/whats-the-difference-between-eval-and-exec

While realizing the OP question is for Linux: when ending up here through a search engine, on Windows 10 the following fixes the issue:
set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf8
python myscript.py

SyntaxError: Non-UTF-8 code starting with '\xc4'

Problem while importing module
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import win32com.client
when I run it in eclipse, syntaxError occurs.
but it runs perfectly on Windows console.
how to type the right coding of pywin32?

For eclipse unicode console support:
Add -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 to eclipse.ini which is in the eclipse install directory.
In eclipse – Run\Run Configurations\Python Run\configuration\Common\make sure UTF-8 is selected
In eclipse – Window\Preferences\General\Workspace\Text file encoding\making sure UTF-8 is selected
In [python install path]\Lib\site.py – chane from encoding = “ascii” to encoding = “utf-8”
Make sure you’re using unicode supporting fonts in eclipse – Window\Preferences\Appearance\Colors and Fonts\Debug\Console font\Edit

Python 3.4.3: Safe way to print unicode strings to a console? [duplicate]

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.

Python console can't deal with Unicode?

(I'm using Python 3.4 for this, on Windows)
So, I have this code I whipped out to better show my troubles:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import os
os.startfile('C:\\téxt.txt')
On IDLE it works as it should (it just opens that file I specified), but on Console (double-click) it keeps saying Windows can't find the file. Of course, if I try to open "text.txt" instead it works perfectly, as long as it exists.
It's slowly driving me insane. Someone help me, please.

You are using the wrong encoding, try using cp1252 -
# -*- coding: cp1252 -*-

Your file name is 'C:\téxt.txt',try to use 'C:\text.txt'

Encoding difference in Eclipse and Windows console

I have a Python script which works perfectly in Eclipse Console (Run configuration).
When I try to launch this script on a Windows 7 console, I have the encoding error:
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xc9' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
I changde the code page of my Windows console to use the same one as in Eclipse (Window->Perference->General->Worspace->Text file encoding):
chcp 1252
At the beginning of the script, I add:
# -*- coding: cp1252 -*-
But it changes nothing.
It works on Eclipse console, so I do not want to decode/encode all my strings for Windows console.
Have you any idea or advice to fix that behaviour?

You could try setting both eclipse's and the windows cmd line's encodings to Utf-8 and see if that works, unless you absolutely need the cp1252 encoding.

The issue is that Python will expect your 8 bit strings to contain ASCII only, not Unicode. u'\xc9 is a Unicode character. Perhaps Eclipse is more friendly than Windows 7 console. You should use the unicode command to convert characters to Unicode as you get them:
value = unicode(value, "utf-8")
See this article for more.