Getting strange characters in the command prompt

[sebb]

For information, I have windows xp (english edition).

When I use special non-english characters (like é à è ...) in my
python code, IDLE tells me to add a line like:

# -*- coding: cp1252 -*-

.... because of the presence of non-ASCII characters.

When I write a script like the folowing:

# -*- coding: cp1252 -*-
print "é à è"

.... and I run it in the windows command prompt, I get strange
characters I didn't ask for.

And when I write those non-English characters (é à è) directly in the
command prompt, I get the correct characters.

Can anyone help we with that problem?

[Irmen de Jong]

Re: Getting strange characters in the command prompt

sebb wrote:

[...][color=blue]
> ... and I run it in the windows command prompt, I get strange
> characters I didn't ask for.
>
> And when I write those non-English characters (é à è) directly in the
> command prompt, I get the correct characters.
>
> Can anyone help we with that problem?[/color]

Does executing

chcp 1252

before running your python program help?
The windows console is not set to code page 1252 by default
as far as I know, but some other windows-specific encoding.

--Irmen

[Martin v. Loewis]

Re: Getting strange characters in the command prompt

sebb wrote:
[color=blue]
> # -*- coding: cp1252 -*-
> print "é à è"
>
> ... and I run it in the windows command prompt, I get strange
> characters I didn't ask for.
>[/color]
[...][color=blue]
> Can anyone help we with that problem?[/color]

As Irmen explains, this is because cmd.exe uses code page 850
(on your installation). You should write

print u"é à è"

Regards,
Martin

[sebb]

Re: Getting strange characters in the command prompt

Thanks a lot