Python: file.read() function error - UnicodeDecodeErrors?

Question

How do I read bytes from raw bin files in python because file.read() function ends up in UnicodeDecodeErrors?

To be specific I am reading a.bin file and I getting with this error.

File "F:\Codes\Python\ML\Pybrain_test.py", line 27, in <module>
  string = img_set.read(784)
File "F:\Programs\Python\lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 23, in decode
  return codecs.charmap_decode(input,self.errors,decoding_table)[0]
UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x8d in position 1440: character maps to <undefined>

You've got to open the file in binary mode, otherwise the default text mode will try to decode the file bytes in Python 3. — Mark Ransom
– Mark Ransom, Commented Jun 26, 2017 at 15:42

Ofer Sadan · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-26 16:08:42Z

2

If you opened the file only with open(filename) it is interpreted as text, not as bytes. You should open the file as a bytes file, like this:

f = open(filename, 'b')

And then f.read() will not give that error

edited Jun 26, 2017 at 16:08

answered Jun 26, 2017 at 15:45

Ofer Sadan

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