Newbie problem with codecs

[Alex Martelli]

Andrew Dalke wrote:
   ...
> derek / nul wrote:
>> >   File "apply_physics.py", line 12, in ?
>> >     codecs.lookup(BOM_UTF16_LE)
>> > NameError: name 'BOM_UTF16_LE' is not defined
> 
> Alex
>> Change the statement to:
>> codecs.lookup(codecs,BOM_UTF16_LE)
> 
> Typo?  Shouldn't that be a "." instead of a "."?

A dot, not a comma -- sorry, the font I use makes them hard
to tell apart (at least w/my failing eyesight) and they're right
next to each other on the keyboard... which I guess is why I
think you have dots on both sides of "instead" in your phrase?-).


> In any case
> 
>>>> codecs.lookup(codecs.BOM_UTF16_LE)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
>   File "C:\PYTHON23\Lib\encodings\__init__.py", line 84, in
>   search_function
>     globals(), locals(), _import_tail)
> ValueError: Empty module name
>>>>
> 
> In any case, the "BOM" means "byte order marker" and
> the constant is the string prefix used to indicate which
> UTF16 encoding is used.  It isn't the encoding name.

Perfectly right -- codecs.BOM_UTF16_LE is just a 2-character
string which doesn't name a codec (but rather gives the BOM
for one).  I saw that obvious-cause NameError and didn't look
any deeper -- thanks for doing so.


> Perhaps the following is what the OP wanted?
> 
>>>> codecs.lookup("utf-16-le")
> (<built-in function utf_16_le_encode>, <built-in function
> utf_16_le_decode>, <class encodings.utf_16_le.StreamReader at 0x01396840>,
> <class encodings.utf_16_le.StreamWriter at 0x01396810>)
>>>>

I won't dare guess, but it's certainly one possibility.


Alex