How do I fix a Unicode decode error in Python?

tl;dr / quick fix

Don’t decode/encode willy nilly.
Don’t assume your strings are UTF-8 encoded.
Try to convert strings to Unicode strings as soon as possible in your code.
Fix your locale: How to solve UnicodeDecodeError in Python 3.6?
Don’t be tempted to use quick reload hacks.

What is Unicode decode error in Python?

The UnicodeDecodeError normally happens when decoding an str string from a certain coding. Since codings map only a limited number of str strings to unicode characters, an illegal sequence of str characters will cause the coding-specific decode() to fail.

What is a Unicode decode error?

This error indicate a failed attempt to create an unicode object (i.e. the Python internal representation for a sequence of internationalized characters as defined by the Unicode standard) from a str object, by “decoding” the sequence of bytes of the latter according to some conventional encoding.

How do I change the encoding to UTF-8 in Python?

Use str. encode() to encode a string as UTF-8 Call str. encode() to encode str as UTF-8 bytes. Call bytes. decode() to decode UTF-8 encoded bytes to a Unicode string.

How do you fix a Unicode error?

The first step toward solving your Unicode problem is to stop thinking of type< ‘str’> as storing strings (that is, sequences of human-readable characters, a.k.a. text). Instead, start thinking of type< ‘str’> as a container for bytes.

How do I set the default encoding to UTF-8 in Python 3?

For earlier versions a solution is to make sure PyDev does not run with UTF-8 as the default encoding. Under Eclipse, run dialog settings (“run configurations”, if I remember correctly); you can choose the default encoding on the common tab.

What is Unicode in Python?

Python’s string type uses the Unicode Standard for representing characters, which lets Python programs work with all these different possible characters. Unicode (https://www.unicode.org/) is a specification that aims to list every character used by human languages and give each character its own unique code.

Should I use ASCII or Unicode?

Unicode is the universal character encoding used to process, store and facilitate the interchange of text data in any language while ASCII is used for the representation of text such as symbols, letters, digits, etc. in computers. ASCII : It is a character encoding standard for electronic communication.

Do you get a unicodedecodeerror with errors =’replace’?

You should not get a UnicodeDecodeError with errors=’replace’. Also str.decode (‘latin-1’) should never fail, because ISO-8859-1 has a valid character mapping for every possible byte sequence. My suspicion is that message is already a unicode string, not bytes.

What causes a Unicode code to fail in Python?

UnicodeDecodeError – Python Wiki The UnicodeDecodeError normally happens when decoding an str string from a certain coding. Since codings map only a limited number of str strings to unicode characters, an illegal sequence of str characters will cause the coding-specific decode () to fail.

How to remove Unicode characters in Python pool?

Explanation: 1 Firstly, we will take an input string in the variable named str. 2 Then, we will apply the replace () method in which we will replace the particular Unicode character with the empty space. 3 At last, we will print the output. 4 Hence, you can see the output string with all the removed Unicode characters.

How to replace Unicode characters in string with something else?

Note that the text is an HTML source from a webpage using Python 2.7’s urllib2.read (webaddress). I know the unicode character for the bullet character as U+2022, but how do I actually replace that unicode character with something else?

How do I fix a Unicode decode error in Python? tl;dr / quick fix Don’t decode/encode willy nilly. Don’t assume your strings are UTF-8 encoded. Try to convert strings to Unicode strings as soon as possible in your code. Fix your locale: How to solve UnicodeDecodeError in Python 3.6? Don’t be tempted to use quick…