unicode and os.system

[Dumbkiwi]

I've got a rather large python script that I write and maintain. It has
some interaction with other programmes on the linux/kde desktop through
the dcop interface. This script also uses the gettext module to enable
the output of the script to be translated into several languages,
including utf-8 encoded text.

However, when I issue a dcop call to an application (which is a docker
application that can display text above an icon), the operation fails with:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/matt/karamba/lwbkup/liquid_weather.py", line 2970, in widgetUpdated
os.system('dcop kxdocker docker changeTextByName Current "%s : %s"' %(_(situtext), weather.temperature()))
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 2:
ordinal not in range(128)

_(situtext) is a variable containing a unicode string.

My python environment has ascii as its encoding for stdoutANSI_X3.4-1968

the dcop call I'm using requires a QString variable where the _(situtext)
is.

Can anyone help me to work through this issue? I'm a bit lost as to where
to start.

Thanks

Matt

 

[Erik Max Francis]

Can anyone help me to work through this issue? I'm a bit lost as to where
to start.

If you want to convert it to UTF-8, then do so with

u.decode('utf-8')

 

[Dumbkiwi]

If you want to convert it to UTF-8, then do so with

u.decode('utf-8')

I've tried that previously, and get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/matt/karamba/lwbkup/liquid_weather.py", line 2765, in initWidget
os.system('dcop kxdocker docker addIcon Current %s "%s : %s" /dev/null GIcon lwp none none none none' %(icopath, QString(situtext.decode('utf-8'), weather.temperature()))
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe4' in
position 9: ordinal not in range(128)

Thanks for responding though.

Matt

 

[Erik Max Francis]

I've tried that previously, and get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/matt/karamba/lwbkup/liquid_weather.py", line 2765, in initWidget
os.system('dcop kxdocker docker addIcon Current %s "%s : %s" /dev/null GIcon lwp none none none none' %(icopath, QString(situtext.decode('utf-8'), weather.temperature()))
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe4' in
position 9: ordinal not in range(128)

Thanks for responding though.

That means one of the other things you're trying to print with %s is
also a Unicode string, and it contains non-ASCII characters. Try
printing their types to see which one it is.

 

[jepler]

I think you need
u.encode('utf-8')
..encode() turns unicode into a byte string, .decode() turns a byte string into
unicode.

Jeff

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