python trivia game error

Question

Trying to have a game where each question has a unique value associated to it. The player's score is then the total number of points of the questions she or he answers correctly. Been fiddling with it but I keep running into these errors :

code:

# Trivia Challenge
# Trivia game that reads a plain text file

import sys

def open_file(file_name, mode):
    """Open a file."""
    try:
        the_file = open(file_name, mode)
    except IOError as e:
        print("Unable to open the file", file_name, "Ending program.\n", e)
        input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")
        sys.exit()
    else:
        return the_file

def next_line(the_file):
    """Return next line from the trivia file, formatted."""
    line = the_file.readline()
    line = line.replace("/", "\n")
    return line

def next_block(the_file):
    """Return the next block of data from the trivia file."""
    category = next_line(the_file)
    point_value = 0
    question = next_line(the_file)

    answers = []
    answers.append(next_line(the_file))

    if( answers[0]=="True\n"):
        answers.append(next_line(the_file))
    else:
        for i in range(4):
            answers.append(next_line(the_file))

    correct = next_line(the_file)
    if correct:
        correct = correct[0]
        point_value = (int)(next_line(the_file).strip())
    explanation = next_line(the_file) 

    return category, question, answers, correct, explanation, point_value

def welcome(title):
    """Welcome the player and get his/her name."""
    print("\t\tWelcome to Trivia Challenge!\n")
    print("\t\t", title, "\n")

def main():
    trivia_file = open_file("trivia.txt", "r")
    title = next_line(trivia_file)
    welcome(title)
    score = 0

    # get first block
    category, question, answers, correct, explanation, point_value = next_block(trivia_file)
    while category:
        # ask a question
        print(category)
        print(question)
        i=0
        for a in answers:
            print ("\t", i + 1, "-", a)
            i = i + 1        # get answer

        answer = input("What's your answer?: ")

        # check answer
        if answer == correct:
            print("\nRight!", end=" ")
            score += 1
        else:
            print("\nWrong.", end=" ")
        print(explanation)
        print("Score:", score, "\n\n")

        # get next block
        category, question, answers, correct, explanation, score, point_value = next_block(trivia_file)

    trivia_file.close()

    print("That was the last question!")
    print("You're final score is", score)

main() 
input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")

not sure why it's having these errors/why its not running - suggestions? ty!

this is connected to a seperate .txt file named "trivia.txt" with all the questions and points.

Answer 1

Most likely the error is occurring because your text file contains unicode characters. You can add the encoding parameter to the open call to tell python that it isn't in the default ascii encoding.

the_file = open(file_name, mode, encoding='utf-8')

If this doesn't work, it may be because the file is using a different encoding such as 'iso-8859-15'.

The Python documentation Unicode-HOWTO has more details about dealing with Reading and Writing Unicode Data .