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

[Francis P. Boscoe]

>You don't show even a snippet of code.  If you are asking
>for help here, it is good form to show us your code.  Since
>you don't state how you are reading the data and how you are
>printing the data, we can't help much.  Here are some tips:
>
>  * Consider learning how to use the csv module, particularly in
>    your case, csv.reader (as Ramit Prasad has already suggested).
>
>  * Consider checking the bytestream to see if the bytes produced
>    on output are the same as on input (also, read the text that
>    Mark Tompkins indicated and learn to distinguish Unicode from
>    UTF-8).
>
>  * Report back to the list the version of Python you are using.
>    [Different versions of Python have subtly different handling of
>    non ASCII character set data, but this should probably not be an
>    issue for the more obvious issue you are showing above.]
>
>We can have no idea what your ultimate goal is with the data, but
>can help you much more if you show us the code.
>
>Here's a sample of what I would/could do (Python 2.6.5):
>
>    import csv
>    reader = csv.reader(open('input-data.txt'),delimiter=',')
>    for row in reader:
>        print 'The capital of %s is %s' % (row[0], row[1],).
>
>The above is trivial, but if you would like some more substantive
>assistance, you should describe your problem in a bit more detail.


I apologize for not including any code, but that's because I didn't have
any. I had no idea where to even begin. I have a 450 page book on beginner
Python programming and nothing like the above is in there. Incidentally,
when I try the above code in Python 3.2 I get an "invalid syntax" message.

My ultimate goal is to be able to do what I've done for years in SAS, where
I consider myself an expert: read in some raw data, perform some
mathematical operations on the data, then output it.  Later this spring I
will be teaching an audience that does not have access to SAS (community
college students) and Python was suggested as an alternative.

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