Subprocess module and unicode input

[Matthew Lausch]

I'd like to use the subprocess module with upper level characters in
the process name or in the arguments to the process. Something like
this:

cmd = [ u'test_\u65e5\u672c\u8a9e_exec.bat', u'arg1', u'arg2' ]
subprocess.call(cmd)

But this gives the error:

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position
5-7: ordinal not in range(128)

Is there a way around this problem? I don't want to assume any
particular set of characters. The example above uses Japanese
characters, but I would like to support anything.

Thanks.

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:46:26 -0300, Matthew Lausch <mc******@gmail.com>
escribi�:

I'd like to use the subprocess module with upper level characters in
the process name or in the arguments to the process. Something like
this:

cmd = [ u'test_\u65e5\u672c\u8a9e_exec.bat', u'arg1', u'arg2' ]
subprocess.call(cmd)

But this gives the error:

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position
5-7: ordinal not in range(128)

Is there a way around this problem? I don't want to assume any
particular set of characters. The example above uses Japanese
characters, but I would like to support anything.

You have to encode those unicode objects anyway - but you don't have to
assume any encoding.
Your .bat file will be executed by CMD.EXE, and the shell expects a string
- doesn't understand unicode objects. Like when you type that same
commands on the console.
Use sys.getfilesystemencoding() to obtain the required encoding (likely
"mbcs"):

fse = sys.getfilesystemencoding()
cmd = [arg.encode(fse) if isinstance(arg,unicode) else arg
for arg in cmd]

--
Gabriel Genellina

[Matthew Lausch]

Thanks! That worked perfectly.
Matt

On Sep 7, 10:42 pm, "Gabriel Genellina" <[e-mail]>
wrote:

En Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:46:26 -0300, Matthew Lausch <[e-mail]>
escribi?:

I'd like to use thesubprocessmodule with upper level characters in
the process name or in the arguments to the process. Something like
this:

cmd = [ u'test_\u65e5\u672c\u8a9e_exec.bat', u'arg1', u'arg2' ]
subprocess.call(cmd)

But this gives the error:

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position
5-7: ordinal not in range(128)

Is there a way around this problem? I don't want to assume any
particular set of characters. The example above uses Japanese
characters, but I would like to support anything.

You have to encode those unicode objects anyway - but you don't have to
assume any encoding.
Your .bat file will be executed by CMD.EXE, and the shell expects a string
- doesn't understand unicode objects. Like when you type that same
commands on the console.
Use sys.getfilesystemencoding() to obtain the required encoding (likely
"mbcs"):

fse = sys.getfilesystemencoding()
cmd = [arg.encode(fse) if isinstance(arg,unicode) else arg
for arg in cmd]

--
Gabriel Genellina