How to handle Unicode encoding errors in Python

Answered
Jan 05, 2026 1622 views 1 answers
44

I'm getting UnicodeDecodeError when reading files or processing text. How do I properly handle encoding in Python?

O
Asked by omar_linux
Platinum 593 rep

1 Answer

8

Unicode errors are common when dealing with files from different sources. Here's how to handle them:

Specify encoding when opening files

# Always specify encoding
with open('file.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    content = f.read()

# Handle different encodings
try:
    with open('file.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
        content = f.read()
except UnicodeDecodeError:
    with open('file.txt', 'r', encoding='latin-1') as f:
        content = f.read()

Use error handling

# Ignore errors
with open('file.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8', errors='ignore') as f:
    content = f.read()

# Replace invalid characters
with open('file.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8', errors='replace') as f:
    content = f.read()
S
Answered by security_pro 1 week, 2 days ago
Bronze 259 rep

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