How to read a Chinese txt file (Python)

Question

I have a .txt file named "chinchars.txt". Inside, I have a single line with these two characters:

节日

How do I read this text file and return those to characters? Using this code:

inputFile = open('chinchars.txt').readlines()

It outputs this error:

UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x8f in position 
18: character maps to <undefined>

I believe I need to "decode" the characters someway. How would this be accomplished?

Please include the complete error message and mention which Python (2.7 or 3.x) you use. — DYZ, Jun 23 '18 at 06:22
Possible duplicate of [How to read Chinese files?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36486962/how-to-read-chinese-files) — Rahul Goswami, Jun 23 '18 at 06:23
You will have to identify the encoding the text file is using and give it to the `open()` function as the `encoding` argument. There are a few encodings for Chinese characters in use. — Klaus D., Jun 23 '18 at 06:25

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 23 '18 at 06:21

3

Try this, it might helps you:

inputFile = open('chinchars.txt', encoding="utf8").readlines()

Note that it is better to open a file with with. like this:

with open('chinchars.txt', encoding="utf8") as f:
    inp = f.readlines()

answered Jun 23 '18 at 06:21

Mehrdad Pedramfar

@DyZ yes, that is why I wrote this might help you. – Mehrdad Pedramfar Jun 23 '18 at 06:24
2

@DyZ I'm pretty sure the default for text streams (`sys.std*`, `open`) is locale/platform-dependent in Python 3. The encoding defaults to UTF-8 only for source encoding and for `str.encode/decode`. – lenz Jun 23 '18 at 06:32
@Elliptica, take a look at this link, it will answer you question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57662894/what-is-the-difference-between-read-and-readline-in-python#:~:text=The%20main%20difference%20is%20that,you%20specify%20in%20the%20parenthesis. – Mehrdad Pedramfar Apr 16 '22 at 07:03

1 Answers1