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I am using Python 3.1 on a Windows 7 machine. Russian is the default system language, and utf-8 is the default encoding.

Looking at the answer to a previous question, I have attempting using the "codecs" module to give me a little luck. Here's a few examples:

>>> g = codecs.open("C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\beeline.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#39>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\Site.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#40>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:\Python31\Notes.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 11-12: malformed \N character escape (<pyshell#41>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\Site.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#44>, line 1)

My last idea was, I thought it might have been the fact that Windows "translates" a few folders, such as the "users" folder, into Russian (though typing "users" is still the correct path), so I tried it in the Python31 folder. Still, no luck. Any ideas?

mkrieger1
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Eric
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    @Wahnfrieden What? Python 2 is to be phased out in the future, so it makes sense to use Python 3, despite its "lack" of "maturity". – Humphrey Bogart Feb 24 '10 at 00:11
  • @Beau Martinez @orip (significant) lack of library support is a good enough reason for most cases. With the Py3k features back-ported to Python 2.6 and 2.7, porting to 3.x later on will be easy anyway, and you don't sacrifice huge amounts of library support (which is especially hazardous if you're a new user and can't properly anticipate which libraries you'd want). – aehlke Feb 25 '10 at 03:10
  • Python 3 default string literals are unicode strings, so `\u` is active, and thus the string literal `'\ufoo'` raises a `SyntaxError`. In Python 2, default string literals are not unicode strings, so `\u` is inactive, and thus the string literal `'\ufoo'` does not raise any error. In contrast, the string literal `b'\ufoo'` does *not* raise any error in Python 3, and the string literal `u'\ufoo'` *does* raise an error in Python 2. – 0 _ Apr 08 '21 at 03:00

10 Answers10

976

The problem is with the string

"C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\beeline.txt"

Here, \U in "C:\Users... starts an eight-character Unicode escape, such as \U00014321. In your code, the escape is followed by the character 's', which is invalid.

You either need to duplicate all backslashes:

"C:\\Users\\Eric\\Desktop\\beeline.txt"

Or prefix the string with r (to produce a raw string):

r"C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\beeline.txt"
QA Collective
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Martin v. Löwis
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    I found this error in a function docstring while porting a 2.x code to python3. – Sridhar Ratnakumar Apr 28 '10 at 20:16
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    I ran into this error when I used triple quote `'''` comments around a section of code that contained a raw string with a `\U` in it. I.E. the string didn't give me an error until I tried to comment it out. For this reason the double backslash method might be preferred. – Chris Mueller May 22 '15 at 15:46
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    I am prefixing the string with r, but it is still giving me the error. – Bobort Oct 17 '16 at 21:01
  • I have the same error but my string is a variable. No possibility to put an 'r' before the variable. How do I resolve this? – Reman Nov 30 '17 at 08:44
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    A third solution (also proposed by @Adam Baylin Autuori) is to replace '\' with '/' in the path. Python understand both '\' (Windows-style) or '/' (Unix-style) as directory separator. – Jona Apr 17 '18 at 09:17
  • This answer does not work for me either. If I am right, the fact that the backslashes are doubled makes the directory wrong so I get a `FileNotFoundError`. – Outcast Jun 20 '18 at 21:27
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    @Chris Mueller - I had the same issue as you mentioned. I had commented out a bunch of lines in the script using the triple single quotes (''') and I kept running into the issue. After I read your comment I noticed there was a path mentioned in the commented lines and it had backslash. I changed it to forward slash and now the script works fine. Thanks a ton man! – Arty155 Dec 17 '22 at 18:55
49

Typical error on Windows because the default user directory is C:\user\<your_user>, so when you want to pass this path as a string argument into a Python function, you get a Unicode error, just because the \u is a Unicode escape. If the next 8 characters after the \u are not numeric this produces an error.

To solve it, just double the backslashes: C:\\user\\<\your_user>... This will ensure that Python treats the single backslashes as single backslashes.

DaCruzR
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Julio Cesar
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    This answer isn't quite correct. Lower and upper "u" are different. `\uXXXX` is for 4 character (2 byte) unicode escapes and `\UXXXXXXXX` is for 8 character (4 byte) escapes. – tdelaney Apr 17 '22 at 20:20
35

Prefixing with 'r' works very well, but it needs to be in the correct syntax. For example:

passwordFile = open(r'''C:\Users\Bob\SecretPasswordFile.txt''')

No need for \\ here - maintains readability and works well.

Neuron
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Fiddy Bux
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  • How triple quote worked and not double quote double single quote ? I tried and triple single quote worked like a charm but everything else failed miserably, could you please explain – Brainiac Mar 18 '21 at 18:49
  • @Brainiac If double quotes are acceptable for you, I used them as below without any issue: `foo(r"C:\Users\name\ridiculous path with spaces\filename (2).pdf")` – Neman Sep 16 '22 at 14:20
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With Python 3 I had this problem:

 self.path = 'T:\PythonScripts\Projects\Utilities'

produced this error:

 self.path = 'T:\PythonScripts\Projects\Utilities'
            ^
 SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in
 position 25-26: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

the fix that worked is:

 self.path = r'T:\PythonScripts\Projects\Utilities'

It seems the '\U' was producing an error and the 'r' preceding the string turns off the eight-character Unicode escape (for a raw string) which was failing. (This is a bit of an over-simplification, but it works if you don't care about unicode)

Hope this helps someone

Mattman85208
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8
path = pd.read_csv(**'C:\Users\mravi\Desktop\filename'**)

The error is because of the path that is mentioned

Add 'r' before the path

path = pd.read_csv(**r'C:\Users\mravi\Desktop\filename'**)

This would work fine.

Neuron
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Ravi Teja Mureboina
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6

Or you could replace '\' with '/' in the path.

SuperBiasedMan
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Adam Baylin Autuori
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    I advice you to take the [tour] and visit the [help]. Your answer doesn't seem to meet our quality standards. You need to elaborate a bit why this would work, maybe create the complete code example. – rene Nov 03 '15 at 08:46
  • Welcome to Stack Overflow! Please consider editing your post to add more explanation about what your code does and why it will solve the problem. An answer that mostly just contains code (even if it's working) usually wont help the OP to understand their problem. – SuperBiasedMan Nov 03 '15 at 09:38
4

I had this same error in python 3.2.

I have script for email sending and:

csv.reader(open('work_dir\uslugi1.csv', newline='', encoding='utf-8'))

when I remove first char in file uslugi1.csv works fine.

pb2q
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user2859901
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Refer to openpyxl document, you can do changes as followings.

from openpyxl import Workbook
from openpyxl.drawing.image import Image

wb = Workbook()
ws = wb.active
ws['A1'] = 'Insert a xxx.PNG'
# Reload an image
img = Image(**r**'x:\xxx\xxx\xxx.png')
# Insert to worksheet and anchor next to cells
ws.add_image(img, 'A2')
wb.save(**r**'x:\xxx\xxx.xlsx')
october
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Deepika Anand
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    Please consider editing your post to add more explanation about what your code does and why it will solve the problem. An answer that mostly just contains code (even if it's working) usually wont help the OP to understand their problem. – SuperBiasedMan Nov 03 '15 at 09:35
  • Thanks @Deepika Anand, its works, could please explain how? thx – Java.beginner Nov 26 '15 at 11:47
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    Refer the official documentation on page :https://docs.python.org/2/howto/unicode.html . specially the line "In Python source code, Unicode literals are written as strings prefixed with the ‘u’ or ‘U’ character: u'abcdefghijk'. Specific code points can be written using the \u escape sequence, which is followed by four hex digits giving the code point. The \U escape sequence is similar, but expects 8 hex digits, not 4." – Deepika Anand Nov 28 '15 at 05:26
2

I had same error, just uninstalled and installed again the numpy package, that worked!

Andrushenko Alexander
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  • This may have worked for you, and it may well help others, but it would be good if you could explain why this worked, so as to provide others with a potentially viable solution if the reinstall method fails. Don't worry, if not. At this stage in my learning I don't have a solid idea why a numpy reinstall worked in this case either. – Fiddy Bux Dec 07 '18 at 20:20
1

I had this error. I have a main python script which calls in functions from another, 2nd, python script. At the end of the first script I had a comment block designated with ''' '''. I was getting this error because of this commenting code block. I repeated the error multiple times once I found it to ensure this was the error, & it was. I am still unsure why.

PCSailor
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