Python error “ascii codec cannot encode character…”

Question

I have a script which shows

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u044e' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

for line print ord(u), u . How can I run the script ok?

I run C:\\Python27\\pythonw.exe name.py .

# -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-
print "Russian letters".center(18*4)
i = 0
for c in "АБВГДЕЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ"\
         "абвгдежзийклмнопрстуфхцчшщъыьэюя":
  u = unicode(c, 'koi8-r')  
  print ord(u), u
  i += 1
  if i % 4 == 0:
    print

Answer 1

You cannot print a unicode charater to the windows console if the local encoding doesn't support it. So python tries to encode it as ascii and fails. The problematic line is:

print ord(u), u

u is a unicode character. What you want is probably:

# -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

print "Russian letters".center(18*4)
i = 0
for c in u"АБВГДЕЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ"\
         u"абвгдежзийклмнопрстуфхцчшщъыьэюя":
    u = c.encode('koi8-r')  
    print ord(u), u
    i += 1
    if i % 4 == 0:
        print

Also use python.exe for console applications, not pythonw.exe