Why does pandas read_csv have unicode error when encoding utf-8 is specified?

Question

When executing the following Python 3.6 code in Jupyter 5.000 notebook:

import pandas as pd
file = "C:\users\frogf\MSDS7333\data\HIGGS.csv"
data=pd.read_csv(file,nrows=N,header=None,encoding = "utf-8")

it gives the error:

 File "<ipython-input-5-204f62a7e8b4>", line 2
    file = "C:\users\frogf\MSDS7333\data\HIGGS.csv"
          ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \uXXXX escape

Probably because the file is not actually valid UTF-8 - what exactly is the content in that line? — Peteris, Aug 14 '18 at 10:22
You need to escape the back slashes or pass a raw string: `file = r"C:\users\frogf\MSDS7333\data\HIGGS.csv"` `'\u'` is a unicode escape sequence, if this is the error I'm voting to close as it's a typo — EdChum, Aug 14 '18 at 10:23
@EdChum looks exactly what is to me... positions 2 and 3 are `\u` and it's not a raw string... — Jon Clements, Aug 14 '18 at 10:27
adding escape chars worked. sorry to ask dumb question, please close it. — frogfanitw, Aug 14 '18 at 10:31

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 14 '18 at 10:26

1

open the file as raw string. Try:

import pandas as pd
data=pd.read_csv(r"C:\users\frogf\MSDS7333\data\HIGGS.csv",nrows=10,header=None,encoding = "utf-8")

answered Aug 14 '18 at 10:26

Bikash Ranjan Bhoi

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Why does pandas read_csv have unicode error when encoding utf-8 is specified?

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