What is causing the extra number to be printed in my first Python script? (codepage/unicode issue)

Question

I'm a C programmer learning Python 3 for the first time. This is my first script.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
print ("Hello World!")
print ("Ä 0196, Ë 0203, Ï 0207, Ö 0214, Ü 0220, Ÿ 0159.")

Here is some setup and the output:

C:\Users\K\Desktop\Code\Python\Korgan\LearnPythonTheHardWay>chcp 65001
Active code page: 65001

C:\Users\K\Desktop\Code\Python\Korgan\LearnPythonTheHardWay>set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8

C:\Users\K\Desktop\Code\Python\Korgan\LearnPythonTheHardWay>py ex1.py
Hello World!
Ä 0196, Ë 0203, Ï 0207, Ö 0214, Ü 0220, Ÿ 0159.
159.

C:\Users\K\Desktop\Code\Python\Korgan\LearnPythonTheHardWay>

It printed an extra "159." and a newline at the end. Why?

'py' with no arguments:

PS C:\Users\K\desktop\code\Python\Korgan\LearnPythonTheHardWay> py
Python 3.4.3 (v3.4.3:9b73f1c3e601, Feb 24 2015, 22:43:06) [MSC v.1600 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

please print the output of the following: env| grep -i ENCODING — fiacre, Dec 09 '15 at 05:16
what is the program "py"? What happens if you run "py" with no arguments? — fiacre, Dec 09 '15 at 05:18
@fiacre I've updated my question to show 'py' with no arguments. — Korgan Rivera, Dec 09 '15 at 05:25
set PYTHONIOENCODING has a typo, but I don't think it is related — fiacre, Dec 09 '15 at 05:29
Possible duplicate of [Why python 2.7 on Windows need a space before unicode character when print?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30923819/why-python-2-7-on-windows-need-a-space-before-unicode-character-when-print), see also [Python, Unicode, and the Windows console](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5419/python-unicode-and-the-windows-console). Those questions don't describe the exact same symptoms but have the same underlying issue. — roeland, Dec 09 '15 at 22:58
Since you mention C, you can reproduce that issue with a simple C program using `printf`. — roeland, Dec 09 '15 at 23:02

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 10 '15 at 17:07

The Windows console doesn't support code page 65001 and does a number of weird things when you try, due to underlying character-counting bugs. This affects all applications using the C standard IO interfaces, including Python.

If you really, really need to get Unicode to the console it's possible to work around the problem by calling the Win32-specific console APIs directly instead. See win_unicode_console.

What is causing the extra number to be printed in my first Python script? (codepage/unicode issue)

1 Answers1