Why is Python code writing strange things?

Question

I wrote a code that should take a file written in English and print it but instead it returned some strange things. I posted the code and an image of the output. What should i do in order to solve the problem?

f = open("Introduction-first-part.docx")
print(f.read())

That is happening because the file is in `docx` format. Try converting it to plain text and reading it instead. — C_Z_, Jan 21 '20 at 19:28

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 21 '20 at 19:30

1

Try reading in a .txt file instead. .docx is a microsoft word format which does not store text in plaintext which means when you read it you will not get 'english'. It stores things like fonts, spacing, size, and a lot of other information aside form just the contents of the file.

Copy your text out into a different format if you want to read it with python is probably the easiest way.

answered Jan 21 '20 at 19:30

cmxu

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It's a zipped collection of mostly XML files. Since it's compressed, there's very little plain text in there. – Mad Physicist Jan 21 '20 at 19:42

Why is Python code writing strange things?

1 Answers1