In python, when I import sys and type:
>>> sys.getdefaultencoding()
>>> 'ascii'
why is this string automatically encoded as UTF-8?
>>> a = 'ö'
>>> a
>>> '\xc3\xb6'
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Using Python 3?Burhan Khalid– Burhan Khalid2013-08-23 23:36:43 +00:00Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 23:36
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No, I'm still using Python 2.7HappyPy– HappyPy2013-08-23 23:38:22 +00:00Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 23:38
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I think [this][1] comes close to what I was looking for. [1]: stackoverflow.com/questions/2596714/…HappyPy– HappyPy2013-08-30 21:01:19 +00:00Commented Aug 30, 2013 at 21:01
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1 Answer
Because the input you provided to python was
a = ' ö '
\x61\x20\x3d\x20\x27\xc3\xb6\x27
You told a to contain the byte sequence "\xc3\xb6" by putting those two bytes between the quotes in your console input, and so it does.
6 Comments
HappyPy
But why doesn't it use ascii instead since it is the default encoding and I haven't defined any other encoding?
martineau
@user2635863: Because there's isn't any ascii encoding for
ö.
hobbs
@user2635863 because we're not encoding anything. And what would it mean for it to "use ascii" anyway?
HappyPy
@martineau: yes, then I'd have expected an error since there's no ascii encoding for ö. Does this mean that the python interpreter encodes strings automatically to utf-8 (in case of non-ascii characters) even though the default system encoding is ascii?
nneonneo
This is a function of your terminal, not of Python.
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