How To Open A Text File That Has Emojis In It?

I´m trying to do the simplest thing, open a file, read and close it in python. Simple. Well this is the code: name_file = open('Forever.txt', encoding='UTF-8') data = name_file.re

Solution 1:

You are getting a UnicodeEncodeError, likely from your print statement. The file is being read and interpreted correctly, but you can only print characters that your console encoding and font actually support. The error indicates the character isn't supported in the current encoding.

For example:

Python 3.3.5 (v3.3.5:62cf4e77f785, Mar  92014, 10:35:05) [MSC v.160064 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits"or"license"for more information.
>>> print('\U0001F681')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\\Python33\lib\encodings\cp437.py", line 19, in encode
    return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_map)[0]
UnicodeEncodeError:'charmap' codec can't encode character '\U0001f681' in position 0: character maps to <undefined>

But print a character the terminal encoding supports, and it works:

>>>print('\U000000E0')
à

My console encoding was cp437, but if I use a Python IDE that supports UTF-8 encoding, then it works:

>>>print('\U0001f681')
🚁

You may or may not see the character correctly. You need to be using a font that supports the character; otherwise, you get some default replacement character.

Solution 2:

Without seeing your input file, it's hard to guess what encoding it's actually in. A text file containing "little images" isn't a meaningful description of the file format, though my guess is that your file actually is UTF-8 encoded, since opening it with that encoding works. Printing the data fails because the codec of your stdout (likely the codec of your terminal) isn't able to encode the emoji. You could try explicitly encoding in UTF-8, if your terminal supports that encoding:

sys.stdout.buffer.write(data.encode('utf-8'))

If your terminal doesn't support a codec that is able to display the emoji, then this is an inherent limitation of your terminal, and there is nothing you can do about it in the Python code.