What's wrong with these codes as failed to read the strings in Chinese? Is it because Chinese characters can't be read on Mac? Many thanks

[Kevin Hu]

Dear Annie,

Looks like you’re trying to read in a file with encoded characters. By default Python3 reads file in bytes, and you’ll need to decode it. Looks like it’s utf-8 encoding.

More at: https://docs.python.org/3/howto/unicode.html <https://docs.python.org/3/howto/unicode.html>

You can simply add:

namelist_decoded = namelist1801txt.decode(‘utf-8’)

Which should give you the actual characters:

> 陈巍\n胡智健\r黄坤榕\r李星灿\r刘超杰

Some tutorials lying around Internet:

https://www.programiz.com/python-programming/methods/string/encode <https://www.programiz.com/python-programming/methods/string/encode>

https://www.pythoncentral.io/encoding-and-decoding-strings-in-python-3-x/ <https://www.pythoncentral.io/encoding-and-decoding-strings-in-python-3-x/>

Regards,
Kevin

> On Nov 8, 2018, at 21:30, Annie Lu <gabriella19930611 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> # -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
> ... f = open('/Users/annielu/Desktop/namelist1801.txt')
>>>> namelist1801txt = f.read()
>>>> f.close()
>>>> namelist1801txt
> '\xe9\x99\x88\xe5\xb7\x8d\n\xe8\x83\xa1\xe6\x99\xba\xe5\x81\xa5\r\xe9\xbb\x84\xe5\x9d\xa4\xe6\xa6\x95\r\xe6\x9d\x8e\xe6\x98\x9f\xe7\x81\xbf\r\xe5\x88\x98\xe8\xb6\x85\xe6\x9d\xb0\r\xe7\x8e\x8b\xe4\xbf\x8a\xe5\x80\xbc\r\xe4\xbd\x99\xe4\xb8\x9c\xe6\xbd\xae\r\xe9\x99\x88\xe6\x80\x9d\xe5\x87\xbd\r\xe5\x86\xaf\xe5\xb0\x91\xe5\x90\x9b\r\xe9\xbb\x84\xe5\x98\x89\xe8\xb0\x8a\r\xe9\xbb\x84\xe7\x90\xaa\xe7\x90\xaa\r\xe8\xb5\x96\xe5\xa9\x89\xe5\xa9\xb7\r\xe8\xb5\x96\xe5\xbd\xa6\xe9\x9c\x8f\r\xe5\xbb\x96\xe7\xbf\xa0\xe7\x9b\x88\r\xe6\x9e\x97\xe7\xbe\xbd\xe7\x8f\x82\r\xe5\x88\x98\xe5\xae\x89\xe7\x90\xaa\r\xe9\xa9\xac\xe7\x91\x9e\r\xe5\xbd\xad\xe5\x98\x89\xe4\xbb\xaa\r\xe9\x82\xb1\xe6\xaf\x93\xe4\xbb\xaa\r\xe5\xad\x99\xe6\xa3\xae\xe6\xa3\x8b\r\xe8\xb0\xad\xe5\x98\x89\xe7\x90\xaa\r\xe7\x8e\x8b\xe5\xa4\xa9\xe9\x9f\xb5\r\xe5\x90\xb4\xe5\xad\x90\xe7\x8f\xba\r\xe6\x9d\xa8\xe5\x88\xa9\xe8\x8c\xb5\r\xe5\xa7\x9a\xe5\x98\x89\xe9\x9b\xaf\r\xe8\xa2\x81\xe6\x9c\x88\xe6\xbb\xa2\r\xe5\xbc\xa0\xe9\x87\x87\xe7\x8e\
> x89\r\xe5\xbc\xa0\xe6\xb2\x81\xe7\x8e\xa5'
>>>> 
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