Wow!!! A huge thank you to all who replied to this thread! Chris: You gave me some ideas I will apply in the future.
MRAB: Thanks for exposing me to the extended attributes of the UnicodeError object (e.start, e.end, e.object). Mike: Cool example! I like how _cleanlines() recursively calls itself to keep cleaning up a line after an error is handled. Your code solved the mystery of how to recover from a UnicodeError and keep decoding. Random832: Your suggestion to write a custom codecs handler was great. Sample below for future readers reviewing this thread. # simple codecs custom error handler import codecs def custom_unicode_error_handler(e): bad_bytes = e.object[e.start:e.end] print( 'Bad bytes: ' + bad_bytes.hex()) return ('<?>', e.end) codecs.register_error('custom_unicode_error_handler', custom_unicode_error_handler) Malcolm -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list