On Apr 20, 11:54 am, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > I used extensively python and now I find this mess with strings, > I can't even reproduce tutorial examples:>>> "apfel".encode('utf-8') (it was > with umlaut) > > File "<stdin>", line 0 > > ^ > SyntaxError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc4 in position 1: > ordinal not in range(128)
Two things: Mark the character encoding of your file ( read http://www.python.org/doc/2.3/whatsnew/section-encodings.html ), and then if that doesn't work try to .decode('something') your string first with the appropriate codec, then you get a unicode object for free and you don't need the .encode('utf-8'). Also read the slides at http://farmdev.com/talks/unicode/ for some good information about unicode in Python. > > Is there any good guide to this mess of codecs and hell ? > > python should have stayed at version 1.5, every single 'improvement' > has been a mess. But this is the definitive hell. It's true -- decorators, the class/type cleanup, properties, -= and +=, list comprehensions, generators, distutils, and all the new modules in the standard library are completely, entirely useless. Python SHOULD have stayed at 1.5. > > thanks! > > -- > SDF-EU Public Access UNIX System -http://sdf-eu.org -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list