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POHow do I resolve difficulties with decoding and printing Greek characters using Python?
 

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  1. POHow do I resolve difficulties with decoding and printing Greek characters using Python?
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    <p>I am creating a simple game designed to prompt the user for the Greek translation of an English word. For example:</p> <pre><code>cow: # here, the gamer would answer with *η αγελάδα* in order to score one point. </code></pre> <p>I use a helper function to read and decode from a txt file. I do so using the following code in said function:</p> <pre><code># The variable filename refers to my helper function's sole parameter, it takes the # above mentioned txt file as an argument. words_text = codecs.open(filename, 'r', 'utf-8') </code></pre> <p>This helper function then reads each line. The lines resemble something like this:</p> <pre><code># In stack data, when I debug, it reads as u"\η αγελάδα - cow\r\n". u"\u03b7 \u03b1\u03b3\u03b5\u03bb\u03ac\u03b4\u03b1 - cow\r\n" </code></pre> <p>The first line of the file when read, however, has an unwanted prefix, ueff-:</p> <pre><code># u"\ufeffη αγελάδα - cow\r\n" u"\ufeff\u03b7 \u03b1\u03b3\u03b5\u03bb\u03ac\u03b4\u03b1 - cow\r\n" </code></pre> <p>Note: After reviewing Mark's answer, I found out that the prepended oject (ueff) was a BOM signature (it is used to distinguish UTF-8 from other encodings).</p> <p>It's a minor issue and I am not sure how to remove it in the tidiest of manners. Anyways, my helper function then creates and returns a new dictionary which looks something like this:</p> <pre><code>{u'\u03b7 \u03b1\u03b3\u03b5\u03bb\u03ac\u03b4\u03b1': 'cow'} </code></pre> <p>Then, in my main function, I use the following in order to store the user's input:</p> <pre><code># This is the code for the prompt I noted at the beginning. # The variable gr_en_dict is the dictionary noted right above. for key in gr_en_dict: user_reply = raw_input('%s: ' % (gr_en_dict[key])).decode(sys.stdout.encoding) </code></pre> <p>I then compare the value of the user's input with the appropriate key in the dictionary:</p> <pre><code># I imported unicodedata as ud. if ud.normalize('NFC', user_reply) == ud.normalize('NFC', key): score += 1 </code></pre> <p>In a response to a question similar to mine, the user ΤΖΩΤΖΙΟΥ said to import the module unicodedata and to call the normalize method (which I did in the code above), but I suspect that might not be necessary. Unfortunately, this step of the program is of no concern just yet because I have a problem decoding the user's input. To demonstrate, when I print the canonical string representation of user_reply and that of the corresponding key in my dictionary [using the built-in repr()] I get the following result:</p> <p>user's input (user_reply):</p> <pre><code>u'? \u03b1?\u03b5??\u03b4\u03b1' </code></pre> <p>If I print the user's input without the repr() function, it looks like this:</p> <pre><code>? α?ε??δα </code></pre> <p>key in my dictionary:</p> <pre><code>u'\u03b7 \u03b1\u03b3\u03b5\u03bb\u03ac\u03b4\u03b1' </code></pre> <p>If I print it without repr(), I get an error:</p> <pre><code>UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character u'\u03b7' in position 0: character maps to &lt;undefined&gt; </code></pre> <p>Notice the question marks in the user's input and the error I get when I try to print the Greek word proper. This seems to be the crux of my problem.</p> <p><strong>So, what exactly do I need to do in order to decode the user's input and to display all Greek characters properly?</strong></p> <p>When using my native code page:</p> <pre><code>C:\&gt;chcp Active code page: 437 C:\&gt;\python25\python Python 2.5.4 (r254:67916, Dec 23 2008, 15:10:54) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. &gt;&gt;&gt; import sys &gt;&gt;&gt; sys.stdout.encoding 'cp437' &gt;&gt;&gt; print '? α?ε??δα' ? α?ε??δα &gt;&gt;&gt; </code></pre> <p>When using the Greek code page: (strangely, it appears correctly only when I copy it to clipboard first and then paste it into a word type application. I would post an image of the what it actually prints in default console, but I lack the reputation to do so.)</p> <pre><code>C:\&gt;chcp 869 Active code page: 869 C:\&gt;\python25\python Python 2.5.4 (r254:67916, Dec 23 2008, 15:10:54) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. &gt;&gt;&gt; import sys &gt;&gt;&gt; sys.stdout.encoding 'cp869' &gt;&gt;&gt; print ' η αγελάδα' η αγελάδα &gt;&gt;&gt; print 'η αγελάδα' η αγελάδα &gt;&gt;&gt; </code></pre> <p><strong>UP:</strong> I had to change default console's font to Lucida Console. That solved my discrepancy.</p>
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    1. COWhat encoding is printed by `sys.stdin.encoding` and `sys.stdout.encoding`? If you can type the Greek string at the command line, it should be decodable to Unicode and encodable for printing.
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      1. USMark Tolonen
 

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