pip install UnicodeDecodeError

Question

When I'm trying to install beautifulsoup4 on my new notebook (Win 7 64) using pip, I get this error:

Cleaning up...
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\basecommand.py", line 122, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\commands\install.py", line 278, in run

    requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundl
e=self.bundle)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\req.py", line 1234, in prepare_files
    req_to_install.assert_source_matches_version()
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\req.py", line 464, in assert_source_ma
tches_version
    % (display_path(self.source_dir), version, self))
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x9e in position 58: ordinal
 not in range(128)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python27\lib\runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
  File "C:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe\__main__.py", line 9, in <module>
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\__init__.py", line 185, in main
    return command.main(cmd_args)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pip\basecommand.py", line 161, in main
    text = '\n'.join(complete_log)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x9e in position 73: ordinal
 not in range(128)

I use: pip install beautifulsoup4 command

Do you have an idea where could be the problem?

PS: The notebook was used for presentations before get it, so there are programs in multiple languages installed.

@Selva After I've read your advice, I tried it and it works! Thank you! But I'm still wondering why PIP throws error. — Milano
– Milano, Commented Jul 30, 2014 at 15:01
python-packaging-user-guide.readthedocs.org/en/latest/… this is will give you some idea — Selva
– Selva, Commented Jul 31, 2014 at 5:28

sherifzain · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-05 09:39:22Z

27

Or simply, you can run the following command on your system right before pip install, and voila:

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

answered Nov 5, 2015 at 9:39

sherifzain

3774 silver badges6 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

5 Comments

m00am Over a year ago

1) Could you elaborate why you think this helps to solve the OPs question. Maybe it helps someone else. 2) This looks like a bash command. The OP is using Windows so this would be of no use for him.

ulysses Over a year ago

A similar solution worked for me on Amazon Linux, I've set the following environment variable in the console: LANG=en_US.UTF-8

tudor -Reinstate Monica- Over a year ago

This worked for me also. I had to add the locale to /etc/local.gen and run locale-gen first, tho!

MatrixManAtYrService Over a year ago

If you get a warning cannot change locale you might need to install en_US.UTF-8 -- askubuntu.com/a/227513

Louis Yang Over a year ago

This doesn't work on Windows.

jds · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-26 21:32:08Z

7

This is a known issue with pip with an unreleased (as of 26/11/2014) fix. Since you are using Python 2.7, you can manually patch pip for now.

answered Nov 26, 2014 at 21:32

jds

8,31013 gold badges68 silver badges113 bronze badges

Comments

o3bvv · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-18 11:25:01Z

5

This is because your current working directory contains non-ascii characters. E.g.:

$ pwd
$ /home/abuser/Загрузки

This issue is still present in pip 1.5.6 and this is awful. So, you can avoid patching pip and just change your working dir.

answered Dec 18, 2014 at 11:25

o3bvv

5,7263 gold badges27 silver badges26 bronze badges

2 Comments

asmaier Over a year ago

Unfortunately this did not work for me. I changed dir back to `C:` but still got the error. In my case my username has cyrillic characters.

asmaier Over a year ago

It seems having a username with non-ascii characters is another problem of pip I stumbled upon: github.com/pypa/pip/issues/2501

Matt Warrick · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-12 12:16:48Z

1

In my case it was caused because where were non US-ASCII letters in requirements.txt

answered Dec 12, 2017 at 12:16

Matt Warrick

1,4981 gold badge14 silver badges23 bronze badges

Comments

Subhon Amrulloev · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-23 22:54:18Z

0

In my case it was because pip was facing encoding issues when reading setup.cfg file of the repository. Initially when I used PyCharm venvpy creator with default terminal set to gitbash, I was constantly getting this error. Then I manually created my virtual environment with venv in powershell and I didn't get this error, although I got following warning WARNING: Ignore distutils configs in setup.cfg due to encoding errors.

answered Feb 23, 2022 at 22:54

Subhon Amrulloev

11 bronze badge

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

pip install UnicodeDecodeError

5 Answers 5

5 Comments

Comments

2 Comments

Comments

Comments

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

5 Answers 5

5 Comments

Comments

2 Comments

Comments

Comments

Linked

Related