UnicodeError: ASCII decoding error: ordinal not in range(128)

[Hrvoje Nezic]

I get this error whan I try to use characters above 128.
(I am using Python 2.2 on Windows 2000).

Python FAQ suggests the following to change
the default encoding:

import sys
sys.setdefaultencoding(encoding)

However, the module sys (at least at my machine) doesn't have
setdefaultencoding function.

Is there some other way to fix that?

Regards,
Hrvoje Nezic

[Brian Quinlan]

Hrvoje Nezic wrote:
> I get this error whan I try to use characters above 128.
> (I am using Python 2.2 on Windows 2000).
>
> Python FAQ suggests the following to change
> the default encoding:
>
> import sys
> sys.setdefaultencoding(encoding)

I can't believe the Python FAQ suggests that! You should stay away from
that routine (though I'll tell you how to use it later :-).

The real question is: what is the interpretation of characters above 128
in your application? Is the string data encoded using Latin-1, UTF-8,
mbcs, etc? You need to be able to answer this question to know how to
treat characters above 128.

> However, the module sys (at least at my machine) doesn't have
> setdefaultencoding function.
>
> Is there some other way to fix that?

You shouldn't do this but....

>>> import sys
>>> reload(sys)
<module 'sys' (built-in)>
>>> sys.setdefaultencoding('mbcs')
>>> str(u'\u00e9')
'\xe9'

Cheers,
Brian

[Oleg Broytmann]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 12:57:18AM -0800, Brian Quinlan wrote:
> Hrvoje Nezic wrote:
> > I get this error whan I try to use characters above 128.
> > (I am using Python 2.2 on Windows 2000).
> >
> > Python FAQ suggests the following to change
> > the default encoding:
> >
> > import sys
> > sys.setdefaultencoding(encoding)
>

> I can't believe the Python FAQ suggests that! You should stay away from
> that routine (though I'll tell you how to use it later :-).

I wrote this entry in the FAQ, and I really meant it. But I said there,
in the FAQ, that it is valid in sitecustomize.py. Ok, this is valid *only*
in the sitecustomize.py.

Oleg.
--
Oleg Broytmann http://phd.pp.ru/ p...@phd.pp.ru
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.

[Brian Quinlan]

Oleg wrote:
> > I can't believe the Python FAQ suggests that! You should stay away
from
> > that routine (though I'll tell you how to use it later :-).
>
> I wrote this entry in the FAQ, and I really meant it. But I said
there,
> in the FAQ, that it is valid in sitecustomize.py. Ok, this is valid
*only*
> in the sitecustomize.py.

Fair enough.

Cheers,
Brian