Pandas read_csv and UTF-16

Question

I have a CSV text file encoded in UTF-16 (so as to preserve Unicode characters when others use Excel) but when doing a read_csv with Pandas 0.9.0, I get this cryptic error:<

Answer 1

from StringIO import StringIO
import pandas as pd

a = ['Venezuela', 'N/A', 'President', '10/7/12', 'Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias', 'Hugo Ch\xc3\xa1vez', 'Hugo Ch\xc3\xa1vez', 'Hugo Chavez', 'Hugo Ch\xc3\xa1vez Fr\xc3\xadas', 'Hugo Chavez', 'Hugo Ch\xc3\xa1vez']

pd.read_csv(StringIO('\t'.join(a)), delimiter='\t')

works here can upload the head of your data so I can test