Encoding Decoding Python

Question

I have text "confrères" in a text file with encoded format "ISO-8859-2". I want to encode this value in "UTF-8" in python.

I used following code in python(2.7) to convert it but the converted value ["confrčres"] is different from original value ["confrères"].

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import chardet
import codecs

a1=codecs.open('.../test.txt', 'r')

a=a1.read()

b = a.decode(chardet.detect(a)['encoding']).encode('utf8')

a1=codecs.open('.../test_out.txt', 'w').write(b)

Any idea how to get actual value but in UTF8 encoded format in the output file.

Thanks

Note that ISO-8859-2 does not have any codepoint for è. You cannot encode that character with that codec. — Martijn Pieters
– Martijn Pieters, Commented Aug 14, 2015 at 12:39

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-14 12:42:25Z

5

If you know the codec used, don't use chardet. Character detection is never foolproof, the library guessed wrong for your file.

Note that ISO-8859-2 is the wrong codec, as that codec cannot even encode the letter è. You have ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) or Windows codepage 1252 data instead; è in 8859-1 and cp1252 is encoded to 0xE8, and 0xE8 in 8859-2 is č:

>>> print u'confrčres'.encode('iso-8859-2').decode('iso-8859-1')
confrères

Was 8859-2 perhaps the guess chardet made?

You can use the io library to handle decoding and encoding on the fly; it is the same codebase that handles all I/O in Python 3 and has fewer issues than codecs:

from shutil import copyfileobj

with open('test.txt', 'r', encoding='iso-8859-1') as inf:
    with open('test_out.txt', 'w', encoding='utf8') as outf:
        copyfileobj(inf, outf)

I used shutil.copyfileobj() to handle the copying across of data.

edited Aug 14, 2015 at 12:42

answered Aug 14, 2015 at 12:35

Martijn Pieters

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2 Comments

annamalai muthuraman Over a year ago

Thanks Martjin... It worked perfectly fine... I have around 300 files in a folder with different encoding methods - example : TIS-620, ascii, ISO-8859-1, EUC-JP - can you help me in finding existing encoding method for each file and use it dynamically in the above code?

Martijn Pieters Over a year ago

@annamalaimuthuraman: if you have many files, then chardet may be an option, just take into account that it'll get at least some of the guesses wrong.

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