Login | Register For Free | Help
Search for: (Advanced)

Mailing List Archive: Python: Python

codecs, csv issues

 

 

Python python RSS feed   Index | Next | Previous | View Threaded


george.sakkis at gmail

Aug 22, 2008, 6:52 AM

Post #1 of 3 (237 views)
Permalink
codecs, csv issues

I'm trying to use codecs.open() and I see two issues when I pass
encoding='utf8':

1) Newlines are hardcoded to LINEFEED (ascii 10) instead of the
platform-specific byte(s).

import codecs
f = codecs.open('tmp.txt', 'w', encoding='utf8')
s = u'\u0391\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b1'
print >> f, s
print >> f, s
f.close()

This doesn't happen for the default encoding (=None).

2) csv.writer doesn't seem to work as expected when being passed a
codecs object; it treats it as if encoding is ascii:

import codecs, csv
f = codecs.open('tmp.txt', 'w', encoding='utf8')
s = u'\u0391\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b1'
# this works fine
print >> f, s
# this doesn't
csv.writer(f).writerow([s])
f.close()

Traceback (most recent call last):
...
csv.writer(f).writerow([s])
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u0391' in
position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

Is this the expected behavior or are these bugs ?

George
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


__peter__ at web

Aug 22, 2008, 8:44 AM

Post #2 of 3 (215 views)
Permalink
Re: codecs, csv issues [In reply to]

George Sakkis wrote:

> I'm trying to use codecs.open() and I see two issues when I pass
> encoding='utf8':
>
> 1) Newlines are hardcoded to LINEFEED (ascii 10) instead of the
> platform-specific byte(s).
>
> import codecs
> f = codecs.open('tmp.txt', 'w', encoding='utf8')
> s = u'\u0391\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b1'
> print >> f, s
> print >> f, s
> f.close()
>
> This doesn't happen for the default encoding (=None).
>
> 2) csv.writer doesn't seem to work as expected when being passed a
> codecs object; it treats it as if encoding is ascii:
>
> import codecs, csv
> f = codecs.open('tmp.txt', 'w', encoding='utf8')
> s = u'\u0391\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b1'
> # this works fine
> print >> f, s
> # this doesn't
> csv.writer(f).writerow([s])
> f.close()
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
> ...
> csv.writer(f).writerow([s])
> UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u0391' in
> position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
>
> Is this the expected behavior or are these bugs ?

Looking into the documentation

"""
Note: This version of the csv module doesn't support Unicode input. Also,
there are currently some issues regarding ASCII NUL characters.
Accordingly, all input should be UTF-8 or printable ASCII to be safe; see
the examples in section 9.1.5. These restrictions will be removed in the
future.
"""

and into the source code

if encoding is not None and \
'b' not in mode:
# Force opening of the file in binary mode
mode = mode + 'b'

I'd be willing to say that both are implementation limitations.

Peter
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


sjmachin at lexicon

Aug 22, 2008, 3:22 PM

Post #3 of 3 (212 views)
Permalink
Re: codecs, csv issues [In reply to]

On Aug 22, 11:52 pm, George Sakkis <george.sak...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to use codecs.open() and I see two issues when I pass
> encoding='utf8':
>
> 1) Newlines are hardcoded to LINEFEED (ascii 10) instead of the
> platform-specific byte(s).
>
> import codecs
> f = codecs.open('tmp.txt', 'w', encoding='utf8')
> s = u'\u0391\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b1'
> print >> f, s
> print >> f, s
> f.close()

This is documented behaviour:
"""
Note
Files are always opened in binary mode, even if no binary mode was
specified. This is done to avoid data loss due to encodings using 8-
bit values. This means that no automatic conversion of '\n' is done on
reading and writing.
"""
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Python python RSS feed   Index | Next | Previous | View Threaded
 
 


Interested in having your list archived? Contact Gossamer Threads
 
  Web Applications & Managed Hosting Powered by Gossamer Threads Inc.