Python- Handling non ascii characters in file writing

Question

When I run this code:

str1= "Ram's birthplace is “Ayodhya” in Uttar Pradesh"
file = open("abc.txt","w")
file.write(str1)

I got error:

SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe2' in file, no encoding declared

file = open("abc.txt","w",encoding="utf-8"), or maybe it's decoding — whackamadoodle3000
– whackamadoodle3000, Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 7:14

Rakesh · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-30 07:40:08Z

1

Looks like you need to set the encoding on the top of your script to prevent this error.

Ex:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

answered Jan 30, 2018 at 7:40

Rakesh

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2 Comments

Do i need to import anything ?

No. Just set the above snippet to the first line of your script.

snakecharmerb · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-03 08:01:43Z

0

As Rakesh pointed out, you can set an encoding cookie at the top of your script so that it handles non-ascii characters.

Alternatively, you could replace the double quotation marks around Ayodhya with ascii quotation marks:

str1= "Ram's birthplace is \"Ayodhya\" in Uttar Pradesh"

answered Feb 3, 2018 at 8:01

snakecharmerb

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