Unicode blues in Python3

[nn]

Rami Chowdhury wrote:
> On Tuesday 23 March 2010 10:33:33 nn wrote:
> > I know that unicode is the way to go in Python 3.1, but it is getting
> > in my way right now in my Unix scripts. How do I write a chr(253) to a
> > file?
> >
> > #nntst2.py
> > import sys,codecs
> > mychar=chr(253)
> > print(sys.stdout.encoding)
> > print(mychar)
>
> The following code works for me:
>
> $ cat nnout5.py
> #!/usr/bin/python3.1
>
> import sys
> mychar = chr(253)
> sys.stdout.write(mychar)
> $ echo $(cat nnout)
> ý
>
> Can I ask why you're using print() in the first place, rather than writing
> directly to a file? Python 3.x, AFAIK, distinguishes between text and binary > files and will let you specify the encoding you want for strings you write.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Rami
> >
> >  > ./nntst2.py
> >
> > ISO8859-1
> > ý
> >
> >  > ./nntst2.py >nnout2
> >
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "./nntst2.py", line 5, in <module>
> >     print(mychar)
> > UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xfd' in
> > position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
> >
> > > cat nnout2
> >
> > ascii
> >
> > ..Oh great!
> >
> > ok lets try this:
> > #nntst3.py
> > import sys,codecs
> > mychar=chr(253)
> > print(sys.stdout.encoding)
> > print(mychar.encode('latin1'))
> >
> > > ./nntst3.py
> >
> > ISO8859-1
> > b'\xfd'
> >
> > > ./nntst3.py >nnout3
> > >
> > > cat nnout3
> >
> > ascii
> > b'\xfd'
> >
> > ..Eh... not what I want really.
> >
> > #nntst4.py
> > import sys,codecs
> > mychar=chr(253)
> > print(sys.stdout.encoding)
> > sys.stdout=codecs.getwriter("latin1")(sys.stdout)
> > print(mychar)
> >
> >  > ./nntst4.py
> >
> > ISO8859-1
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "./nntst4.py", line 6, in <module>
> >     print(mychar)
> >   File "Python-3.1.2/Lib/codecs.py", line 356, in write
> >     self.stream.write(data)
> > TypeError: must be str, not bytes
> >
> > ..OK, this is not working either.
> >
> > Is there any way to write a value 253 to standard output?
>

#nntst5.py
import sys
mychar=chr(253)
sys.stdout.write(mychar)

> ./nntst5.py >nnout5
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./nntst5.py", line 4, in <module>
    sys.stdout.write(mychar)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xfd' in
position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

equivalent to print.

I use print so I can do tests and debug runs to the screen or pipe it
to some other tool and then configure the production bash script to
write the final output to a file of my choosing.