ASCII encoding error: ordinal not in range(128)

[jicman]

fredrik at pythonware.com says...

>summary: someone's handing you unicode strings (probably
>the COM interface), and you're trying to use them as 8-bit
>strings (probably by passing them to a method that expects
>8-bit data) without specifying an encoding.
>
>(if you want me to be more precise, you have to show us
>more code).

def FindIfAttachments(myMsg,spar,wID,fam):
    myAtt = myMsg.Attachments
    if myAtt.Count > 0:
        LogDir = os.path.join(logspath,'Attachments',spar)
        if os.path.isdir(LogDir):
            #do nothing for now
            nothing = 1
        else:
            os.makedirs(LogDir)
        i = 1
        while i <= myAtt.Count:
            if myAtt.Item(i).Type == 1:
                code = myAtt.Item(i).DisplayName
                name = code.encode()
                if name == '':
                    name = 'Untitled Attachment.msg'
                else:
                    name = CleanNameToSave(name)
                name = spar + ' attachment - ' + name
                name = os.path.join(LogDir,name)
                error = myAtt.Item(i).SaveAsFile(name)
            i = i + 1

myMsg is a COM pointer to an Outlook 2000 message.  myAtt is the pointer to the 
attachments.  DisplayName is the name of the attachment causes the problem.


Here is the error message:
C:\>qna0.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\myprograms\qna0.py", line 1570, in ?
    main()
  File "C:\myprograms\qna0.py", line 1556, in main
    ProcessAllItems(wf2,workpath,workpath,NSpace)
  File "C:\myprograms\qna0.py", line 1484, in ProcessAllItems
    FindIfAttachments(em,Rec['SPAR'],wID,fam)
  File "C:\myprograms\qna0.py", line 1156, in FindIfAttachments
    name = code.encode()
UnicodeError: ASCII encoding error: ordinal not in range(128)

>
>to solve this, you have to add an explicit conversion to the
>right place.  e.g:
>
>    s = u.encode("latin-1")
>
>where "u" is a unicode string and "s" an 8-bit ISO Latin string.
>
>(if you don't do this, Python will convert the string anyway when
>you pass it to an 8-bit function.  the default conversion assumes
>ASCII, which is why you get that exception)

So, if I am understanding this right, the line

name = code.encode()

should be

name = code.encode('latin-1')

or perhaps

name = code.encode('PC-8')

Thanks very much.

I'll try this and let you know....

thank you so very much

josé