Setting the correct encoding when piping stdout in Python

Question

When piping the output of a Python program, the Python interpreter gets confused about encoding and sets it to None. This means a program like this:

# -*- co         


        

Answer 1

export PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8

do the job, but can't set it on python itself ...

what we can do is verify if isn't setting and tell the user to set it before call script with :

if __name__ == '__main__':
    if (sys.stdout.encoding is None):
        print >> sys.stderr, "please set python env PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8, example: export PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8, when write to stdout."
        exit(1)

Update to reply to the comment: the problem just exist when piping to stdout . I tested in Fedora 25 Python 2.7.13

python --version
Python 2.7.13

cat b.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
#-*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys

print sys.stdout.encoding

running ./b.py

UTF-8

running ./b.py | less

None

Answer 2

First, regarding this solution:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
print u"åäö".encode('utf-8')

It's not practical to explicitly print with a given encoding every time. That would be repetitive and error-prone.

A better solution is to change sys.stdout at the start of your program, to encode with a selected encoding. Here is one solution I found on Python: How is sys.stdout.encoding chosen?, in particular a comment by "toka":

import sys
import codecs
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter('utf8')(sys.stdout)

Answer 3

You may want to try changing the environment variable "PYTHONIOENCODING" to "utf_8". I have written a page on my ordeal with this problem.

Tl;dr of the blog post:

import sys, locale, os
print(sys.stdout.encoding)
print(sys.stdout.isatty())
print(locale.getpreferredencoding())
print(sys.getfilesystemencoding())
print(os.environ["PYTHONIOENCODING"])
print(chr(246), chr(9786), chr(9787))

gives you

utf_8
False
ANSI_X3.4-1968
ascii
utf_8
ö ☺ ☻

Answer 4

An arguable sanitized version of Craig McQueen's answer.

import sys, codecs
class EncodedOut:
    def __init__(self, enc):
        self.enc = enc
        self.stdout = sys.stdout
    def __enter__(self):
        if sys.stdout.encoding is None:
            w = codecs.getwriter(self.enc)
            sys.stdout = w(sys.stdout)
    def __exit__(self, exc_ty, exc_val, tb):
        sys.stdout = self.stdout

Usage:

with EncodedOut('utf-8'):
    print u'ÅÄÖåäö'

Answer 5

I ran into this problem in a legacy application, and it was difficult to identify where what was printed. I helped myself with this hack:

# encoding_utf8.py
import codecs
import builtins


def print_utf8(text, **kwargs):
    print(str(text).encode('utf-8'), **kwargs)


def print_utf8(fn):
    def print_fn(*args, **kwargs):
        return fn(str(*args).encode('utf-8'), **kwargs)
    return print_fn


builtins.print = print_utf8(print)

On top of my script, test.py:

import encoding_utf8
string = 'Axwell Λ Ingrosso'
print(string)

Note that this changes ALL calls to print to use an encoding, so your console will print this:

$ python test.py
b'Axwell \xce\x9b Ingrosso'

Answer 6

I could "automate" it with a call to:

def __fix_io_encoding(last_resort_default='UTF-8'):
  import sys
  if [x for x in (sys.stdin,sys.stdout,sys.stderr) if x.encoding is None] :
      import os
      defEnc = None
      if defEnc is None :
        try:
          import locale
          defEnc = locale.getpreferredencoding()
        except: pass
      if defEnc is None :
        try: defEnc = sys.getfilesystemencoding()
        except: pass
      if defEnc is None :
        try: defEnc = sys.stdin.encoding
        except: pass
      if defEnc is None :
        defEnc = last_resort_default
      os.environ['PYTHONIOENCODING'] = os.environ.get("PYTHONIOENCODING",defEnc)
      os.execvpe(sys.argv[0],sys.argv,os.environ)
__fix_io_encoding() ; del __fix_io_encoding

Yes, it's possible to get an infinite loop here if this "setenv" fails.