[Tutor] read in text file containing non-English characters

[Prasad, Ramit]

>I would like to know to how to read in the file and then access arbitary rows in the file, so that I can print a line such as: 
> Cabañas,Sensuntepeque,-88.6300,13.8800
>The capital of Cabañas is Sensuntepeque

>while preserving the non-English characters

>now, for example, I get

>Cabañas

Make sure to open the file with correct encoding or convert in your program. 
Incorrect encoding is a very likely reason why you get funky characters (or
not having the appropriate codepages/languages installed). According to 
the internet you can open the file and specify the encoding all at once.
http://docs.python.org/library/codecs.html#codecs.open 
>>>import codecs
>>>f = codecs.open("test", "r", "utf-8")

The list of standard codecs is on that page at 7.8.3.

You can also manually convert a string, but that is more of a pain..and you 
would still need to know the codec.

As for the rest of the problem, I would suggest you take a quick peek at the csv
module which will parse your data for you. 

Ramit


Ramit Prasad | JPMorgan Chase Investment Bank | Currencies Technology
712 Main Street | Houston, TX 77002
work phone: 713 - 216 - 5423

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