Python 3.0 automatic decoding of UTF16

[J Kenneth King]

Johannes Bauer <dfnsonfsduifb at gmx.de> writes:

> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "./modify.py", line 12, in <module>
>     a = AddressBook("2008_11_05_Handy_Backup.txt")
>   File "./modify.py", line 7, in __init__
>     line = f.readline()
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.0/io.py", line 1807, in readline
>     while self._read_chunk():
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.0/io.py", line 1556, in _read_chunk
>     self._set_decoded_chars(self._decoder.decode(input_chunk, eof))
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.0/io.py", line 1293, in decode
>     output = self.decoder.decode(input, final=final)
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.0/codecs.py", line 300, in decode
>     (result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.0/encodings/utf_16.py", line 69, in
> _buffer_decode
>     return self.decoder(input, self.errors, final)
> UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf16' codec can't decode bytes in position 74-75:
> illegal encoding

It probably means what it says: that the input file contains characters
it cannot read using the specified encoding.

Are you generating the file from python using a file object with the
same encoding? If not, then you might want to look at your input data
and find a way to deal with the exception.