How to write Unicode text into a Python file object

Question

Simply put, the following code:

f.write(u'Río Negro')

raises the following error:

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xed' in position 1: ordinal not in range(128)

What can I do?
I'm using Python 2.7.3.

You could search SO with your error code, there's 1,750+ results... — dda
– dda, Commented Jun 5, 2013 at 16:07

Mattie B · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-04 17:07:34Z

5

Using open from the codecs module will eliminate the need for you to manually encode:

import codecs

with codecs.open('file.txt', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    f.write(u'Río Negro')

In Python 3, this functionality is built in to the standard open function:

with open('file.txt', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    f.write(u'Río Negro')

answered Jun 4, 2013 at 17:02

Mattie B

21.5k7 gold badges39 silver badges57 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

This. In Python 3, this functionality is provided by the open() built-in.

io.open() should be used instead of codecs.open(). Its behavior is the same as open() on Python 3 (where io.open is open).

Mike Müller · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-04 16:56:55Z

4

You need to encode your string. Try this:

f.write(u'Río Negro'.encode('utf-8'))

answered Jun 4, 2013 at 16:56

Mike Müller

86k21 gold badges174 silver badges165 bronze badges

it assumes that f is a binary file ('wb' mode on Python 3).