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One of the great improvements of Python 3 over Python 2 is being able to work with non-ascii text, but it doesn't seem to be working on the pi :(

On my pc (python 3.4.1) this works as expected, printing 你好 to the console

print('你好')

but on my pi (python 3.6.1) I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 1, in <module>
    print('\u4f60\u597d')
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 0-1: ordinal not in range(128)

Is there some configuration I'm missing? I don't think it's the terminal setting since the command line echo "你好" works.

If it makes any difference, I'm running Arch linux on the pi.

|improve this question
  • I can't actually test it, but did you try : print(u'你好') ? – Technico.top Jun 23 '17 at 10:32
  • same result - I think the 'u' is ignored in python 3 as all strings are unicode – Rob Agar Jun 23 '17 at 10:37
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    If you're running this in a terminal window, is the terminal window set up for unicode? I get the same or a very similar error running ubuntu on my chromebook if not. – Chris H Jun 23 '17 at 10:56
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Ah fixed it - just needed to set the OS locale to en-GB.UTF8 and log back in.

|improve this answer
  • You can also set the preferences for your terminal specifically. In xfce4-terminal, for example, the "Terminal" menu allows you to set it for the current window, or Edit->Preferences if you want it to stick – Chris H Jun 23 '17 at 11:00
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    thanks, but as this is running headless I had to set the system default locale – Rob Agar Jun 23 '17 at 11:04

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