Setting the correct encoding when piping stdout in Python

Question

When piping the output of a Python program, the Python interpreter gets confused about encoding and sets it to None. This means a program like this:

# -*- co         


        

Answer 1

I ran into this problem in a legacy application, and it was difficult to identify where what was printed. I helped myself with this hack:

# encoding_utf8.py
import codecs
import builtins


def print_utf8(text, **kwargs):
    print(str(text).encode('utf-8'), **kwargs)


def print_utf8(fn):
    def print_fn(*args, **kwargs):
        return fn(str(*args).encode('utf-8'), **kwargs)
    return print_fn


builtins.print = print_utf8(print)

On top of my script, test.py:

import encoding_utf8
string = 'Axwell Λ Ingrosso'
print(string)

Note that this changes ALL calls to print to use an encoding, so your console will print this:

$ python test.py
b'Axwell \xce\x9b Ingrosso'