Error in se xpath

[Alexander Keane]

I'm at the manual typography section in the step-by-step and went to run the xpath command to find all caps. I got an error about a mismatched '(' in xpath.py

Error:

xpath "//p//text()[re:test(., '[A-Z]{2,}') and not(contains(., 'OK') or contains(., 'SOS')) and not(parent::abbr or parent::var or parent::a or parent::*[contains(@epub:type, 'z3998:roman')])]" src/epub/text/*.xhtml
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/squishy-mage/.local/bin/se", line 7, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/home/squishy-mage/.local/pipx/venvs/standardebooks/lib/python3.10/site-packages/se/main.py", line 75, in main
    module = importlib.import_module(command_module)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1050, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1027, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 688, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 879, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 1017, in get_code
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 947, in source_to_code
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 241, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "/home/squishy-mage/.local/pipx/venvs/standardebooks/lib/python3.10/site-packages/se/commands/xpath.py", line 48
    output = f"[path][link=file://{filepath.resolve()}#L{node.sourceline}]Line {node.sourceline}[/][/]: {node.to_string().replace("[", "\\[")}"
                                                                                                                                   ^
SyntaxError: f-string: unmatched '('

This is the first time I've gotten the error, and I verified that I am on 2.9.3

[Vince]

Someone else had this a couple of days ago, and Alex said to upgrade python, as later versions changed how f strings are handled, which the person did and it worked. Neither of them said what version, though; I can say that I’m on 3.13 and don’t get the error, but it’s possible 3.12 is OK as well.

[Vince]

It looks like the f-string improvements were made in 3.12.

[Marshall Bockrath]

Should standard install instructions switch to installing via `uv` instead? It manages Python itself too, and has become pretty widely used.

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[Alex Cabal]

Every week there's a new ultimate Python version/package manager
solution. The whole thing is a disaster, but when it comes to disasters,
I prefer to learn and implement new disasters as little as possible.

On 9/13/25 10:52 AM, Marshall Bockrath wrote:
> Should standard install instructions switch to installing via `uv`
> instead? It manages Python itself too, and has become pretty widely used.
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 11:02 Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org
> <mailto:vr_se...@letterboxes.org>> wrote:
>
> It looks like the f-string improvements were made in 3.12.
>
>> On Sep 13, 2025, at 9:46 AM, Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org

>> <mailto:vr_se...@letterboxes.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Someone else had this a couple of days ago, and Alex said to
>> upgrade python, as later versions changed how f strings are
>> handled, which the person did and it worked. Neither of them said
>> what version, though; I can say that I’m on 3.13 and don’t get the
>> error, but it’s possible 3.12 is OK as well.
>>
>>> On Sep 13, 2025, at 7:20 AM, Alexander Keane <lxtk...@gmail.com

> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.

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[Alexander Keane]

Alright, I got python updated and finally got pipx and se pointing to the correct python. Xpath works, but now I'm getting an error when I run "find-unusual-characters" 

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/squishy-mage/.local/bin/se", line 7, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())

             ^^^^^^
  File "/home/squishy-mage/.local/pipx/venvs/standardebooks/lib/python3.12/site-packages/se/main.py", line 77, in main
    sys.exit(getattr(module, command_function)(args.plain_output))
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/squishy-mage/.local/pipx/venvs/standardebooks/lib/python3.12/site-packages/se/commands/find_unusual_characters.py", line 125, in find_unusual_characters
    lines.append((unusual_character, unicodedata.name(unusual_character), count))
                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ValueError: no such name

[Alex Cabal]

See this Github issue: https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/91103

You are running it on a file with extremely strange contents. Perhaps
you're accidentally running it on a directory that is not an ebook repo?

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[Alexander Keane]

Thank you!

Wish the Python team would make that error language clearer. It really had me thinking it was a function coding error rather than a file format error. Had it just told me "while parsing file X" from the get go...

[Vince]

That’s what the issue was about—the function doesn’t handle control characters, to be able to do that.

We might be able to, though; the unicode-names function already traps for this kind of situation. I just tried a random control character, though, and got an XML parsing error, so it never got to the error you received. Do you know what character it was choking on?

[Alexander Keane]

I'm not sure what it was. Once I knew what to look for, and tested find-unusual-characters on individual files to find the culprit file, it appeared in Emacs as a red \200 following a diacritic letter that had gotten messed up during the ASCII->UTF-8 conversion.

Cleared it out and everything ran fine.

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[Vince]

Thanks. I’ve submitted a PR (for `find-unusual-characters`, not python) that should trap these and handle them gracefully.