python subprocess encoding

Question

I'm trying to store the output of powershell in a var:

import subprocess
subprocess.check_call("powershell \"Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath 'HKLM:SOFTWARE\\\\Microsoft\\\\Windows\\\\CurrentVersion\\\\Uninstall' -ErrorAction 'Stop' -ErrorVariable '+ErrorUninstallKeyPath'\"", shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

this way, using check_call, it prints ok, for example:

DisplayName : Skype™

but this way it only prints to screen, so i have to use

import subprocess
output = subprocess.check_output("powershell \"Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath 'HKLM:SOFTWARE\\\\Microsoft\\\\Windows\\\\CurrentVersion\\\\Uninstall' -ErrorAction 'Stop' -ErrorVariable '+ErrorUninstallKeyPath'\"", shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

but then, using check_output, i get:

DisplayName : SkypeT

how can i work around this?

r3v3r53 · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-03 13:02:15Z

2

Following this post instructions:How to make Unicode charset in cmd.exe by default?

Its possible to bypass this encoding problem

import subprocess
output = subprocess.check_output("chcp 65001 | powershell \"Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath 'HKLM:SOFTWARE\\\\Microsoft\\\\Windows\\\\CurrentVersion\\\\Uninstall' -ErrorAction 'Stop' -ErrorVariable '+ErrorUninstallKeyPath'\"", shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

answered Apr 3, 2018 at 13:02

r3v3r53

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1 Comment

rmflow Over a year ago

why do you transfer output of chcp to powershell? maybe you meant && instead of | ?

Edwin van Mierlo · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-07 11:45:44Z

1

The output is a of type bytes so you need to either decode it to a string with .decode('utf-8') (or with whatever codec you want), or use str(), Example:

import subprocess
output_bytes = subprocess.check_output("powershell \"Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath 'HKLM:SOFTWARE\\\\Microsoft\\\\Windows\\\\CurrentVersion\\\\Uninstall' -ErrorAction 'Stop' -ErrorVariable '+ErrorUninstallKeyPath'\"", shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

output_string = str(output_bytes)
# alternatively
# output_string = output_bytes.decode('utf-8')

# there are lots of \r\n in the output I encounterd, so you can split
# to get a list
output_list = output_string.split(r'\r\n')

# once you have a list, you can loop thru and print (or whatever you want)
for e in output_list:
    print(e)

The key here is to decode to whatever codec you want to use in order to produce the correct character when printing.

edited Mar 7, 2018 at 11:45

answered Mar 7, 2018 at 11:35

Edwin van Mierlo

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3 Comments

r3v3r53 Over a year ago

Hello, thank you for your reply, but the result was the same... I managed to solve it following this post: link i'm posting an anwser with the correct code

shadowtalker Over a year ago

You can also set text=True to obtain results as str instead of bytes, or encoding='utf-8' to set a specific encoding.

FocusedWolf Over a year ago

encoding='ISO-8859-1' worked for me.

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