pip install UnicodeDecodeError

Question

When I'm trying to install beautifulsoup4 on my new notebook (Win 7 64) using pip, I get this error:

Cleaning up...
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\basecommand.py", line 122, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\commands\install.py", line 278, in run

    requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundl
e=self.bundle)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\req.py", line 1234, in prepare_files
    req_to_install.assert_source_matches_version()
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\req.py", line 464, in assert_source_ma
tches_version
    % (display_path(self.source_dir), version, self))
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x9e in position 58: ordinal
 not in range(128)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python27\lib\runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
  File "C:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe\__main__.py", line 9, in <module>
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\__init__.py", line 185, in main
    return command.main(cmd_args)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\basecommand.py", line 161, in main
    text = '\n'.join(complete_log)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x9e in position 73: ordinal
 not in range(128)

I use: pip install beautifulsoup4 command

Do you have an idea where could be the problem?

PS: The notebook was used for presentations before get it, so there are programs in multiple languages installed.

@Selva After I've read your advice, I tried it and it works! Thank you! But I'm still wondering why PIP throws error. — Milano, Jul 30 '14 at 15:01
https://python-packaging-user-guide.readthedocs.org/en/latest/technical.html#pip-vs-easy-install this is will give you some idea — Selva, Jul 31 '14 at 05:28
In my case, [changing the cmd.exe terminal to UTF-8 worked](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/388490/how-to-use-unicode-characters-in-windows-command-line/388500#388500) — José, May 22 '18 at 21:55

score 26 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 05 '15 at 09:39

26

Or simply, you can run the following command on your system right before pip install, and voila:

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

answered Nov 05 '15 at 09:39

sherifzain

367
3
6

6

1) Could you elaborate why you think this helps to solve the OPs question. Maybe it helps someone else. 2) This looks like a bash command. The OP is using Windows so this would be of no use for him. – m00am Nov 05 '15 at 10:01
1

A similar solution worked for me on Amazon Linux, I've set the following environment variable in the console: `LANG=en_US.UTF-8` – ulysses May 17 '16 at 22:49
This worked for me also. I had to add the locale to /etc/local.gen and run locale-gen first, tho! – tudor -Reinstate Monica- May 23 '16 at 08:44
If you get a warning `cannot change locale` you might need to install en_US.UTF-8 -- https://askubuntu.com/a/227513 – MatrixManAtYrService Nov 29 '17 at 04:47
This doesn't work on Windows. – Louis Yang Feb 20 '23 at 05:31

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 26 '14 at 21:32

7

This is a known issue with pip with an unreleased (as of 26/11/2014) fix. Since you are using Python 2.7, you can manually patch pip for now.

answered Nov 26 '14 at 21:32

jds

7,910
11
63
101

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 18 '14 at 11:25

5

This is because your current working directory contains non-ascii characters. E.g.:

$ pwd
$ /home/abuser/Загрузки

This issue is still present in pip 1.5.6 and this is awful. So, you can avoid patching pip and just change your working dir.

answered Dec 18 '14 at 11:25

oblalex

5,366
2
24
25

2

Unfortunately this did not work for me. I changed dir back to `C:\` but still got the error. In my case my username has cyrillic characters. – asmaier Nov 07 '16 at 22:13
It seems having a username with non-ascii characters is another problem of pip I stumbled upon: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/2501 – asmaier Nov 07 '16 at 22:21

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 12 '17 at 12:16

1

In my case it was caused because where were non US-ASCII letters in requirements.txt

answered Dec 12 '17 at 12:16

Matt Warrick

1,385
1
13
22

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 23 '22 at 22:54

In my case it was because pip was facing encoding issues when reading setup.cfg file of the repository. Initially when I used PyCharm venvpy creator with default terminal set to gitbash, I was constantly getting this error. Then I manually created my virtual environment with venv in powershell and I didn't get this error, although I got following warning WARNING: Ignore distutils configs in setup.cfg due to encoding errors.

pip install UnicodeDecodeError

5 Answers5

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