Unicode escape python ошибка

I am using Python 3.1 on a Windows 7 machine. Russian is the default system language, and utf-8 is the default encoding.

Looking at the answer to a previous question, I have attempting using the «codecs» module to give me a little luck. Here’s a few examples:

>>> g = codecs.open("C:UsersEricDesktopbeeline.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#39>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:UsersEricDesktopSite.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#40>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:Python31Notes.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 11-12: malformed N character escape (<pyshell#41>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:UsersEricDesktopSite.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#44>, line 1)

My last idea was, I thought it might have been the fact that Windows «translates» a few folders, such as the «users» folder, into Russian (though typing «users» is still the correct path), so I tried it in the Python31 folder. Still, no luck. Any ideas?

Last updated on 
Feb 10, 2022

In this post, you can find several solutions for:

SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’ codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape

While this error can appear in different situations the reason for the error is one and the same:

• there are special characters( escape sequence — characters starting with backslash — » ).
• From the error above you can recognize that the culprit is ‘U’ — which is considered as unicode character.
  • another possible errors for SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’ will be raised for ‘x’, ‘u’
    • codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated xXX escape
    • codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated uXXXX escape

Step #1: How to solve SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’ — Double slashes for escape characters

Let’s start with one of the most frequent examples — windows paths. In this case there is a bad character sequence in the string:

import json

json_data=open("C:Userstest.txt").read()
json_obj = json.loads(json_data)

The problem is that U is considered as a special escape sequence for Python string. In order to resolved you need to add second escape character like:

import json

json_data=open("C:\Users\test.txt").read()
json_obj = json.loads(json_data)

Step #2: Use raw strings to prevent SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’

If the first option is not good enough or working then raw strings are the next option. Simply by adding r (for raw string literals) to resolve the error. This is an example of raw strings:

import json

json_data=open(r"C:Userstest.txt").read()
json_obj = json.loads(json_data)

If you like to find more information about Python strings, literals

2.4.1 String literals

In the same link we can find:

When an r' or R’ prefix is present, backslashes are still used to quote the following character, but all backslashes are left in the string. For example, the string literal r»n» consists of two characters: a backslash and a lowercase `n’.

Step #3: Slashes for file paths -SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’

Another possible solution is to replace the backslash with slash for paths of files and folders. For example:

«C:Userstest.txt»

will be changed to:

«C:/Users/test.txt»

Since python can recognize both I prefer to use only the second way in order to avoid such nasty traps. Another reason for using slashes is your code to be uniform and homogeneous.

Step #4: PyCharm — SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’ codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape

The picture below demonstrates how the error will look like in PyCharm. In order to understand what happens you will need to investigate the error log.

The error log will have information for the program flow as:

/home/vanx/Software/Tensorflow/environments/venv36/bin/python3 /home/vanx/PycharmProjects/python/test/Other/temp.py
  File "/home/vanx/PycharmProjects/python/test/Other/temp.py", line 3
    json_data=open("C:Userstest.txt").read()
                  ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape

You can see the latest call which produces the error and click on it. Once the reason is identified then you can test what could solve the problem.

import pandas

# read the file
pandas.read_csv("C:UsersitsmycodeDesktoptest.csv")

  File "c:PersonalIJSCodeprogram.py", line 4
    pandas.read_csv("C:UsersitsmycodeDesktoptest.csv")                                                                                     ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape

import pandas

# read the file
pandas.read_csv("C:\Users\itsmycode\Desktop\test.csv")

import pandas

# read the file
pandas.read_csv("C:\Users\itsmycode\Desktop\test.csv")

import pandas

# read the file
pandas.read_csv("C:/Users/itsmycode/Desktop/test.csv")

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Introduction

The following error message is a common Python error, the «SyntaxError» represents a Python syntax error and the «unicodeescape» means that we made a mistake in using unicode escape character.

SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 0-5: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape

Simply to put, the «SyntaxError» can be occurred accidentally in Python and it is often happens because the (ESCAPE CHARACTER) is misused in a python string, it caused the unicodeescape error.

(Note: «escape character» can convert your other character to be a normal character.)

---

SyntaxError Example

Let’s look at an example:

print('It's a nice day.')

Looks like we want to print «It’s a nice day.«, right? But the program will report an error message.

File "<stdin>", line 1
    print('It's a nice day.')
              ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

The reason is very easy-to-know. In Python, we can use print('xxx') to print out xxx. But in our code, if we had used the ' character, the Python interpreter will misinterpret the range of our characters so it will report an error.

To solve this problem, we need to add an escape character «» to convert our ‘ character to be a normal character, not a superscript of string.

print('It's a nice day.')

Output:

It's a nice day.

We print it successfully!

So how did the syntax error happen? Let me talk about my example:

One day, I run my program for experiment, I saved some data in a csv file. In order for this file can be viewed on the Windows OS, I add a new code uFFEF in the beginning of file.

This is «BOM» (Byte Order Mark), Explain to the system that the file format is «Big-Ending«.

I got the error message.

SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 0-5: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, this is an escape character error in Python.

---

Solutions

There are three solutions you can try:

• Add a «r» character in the right of string
• Change to be /
• Change to be \

Solution 1: Add a «r» character in the beginning of string.

title = r'uFFEF'

After we adding a r character at right side of python string, it means a complete string not anything else.

Solution 2: Change to be /.

open("C:UsersClayDesktoptest.txt")

Change to:

open("C:/Users/Clay/Desktop/test.txt")

Solution 3: Change to be \.

open("C:UsersClayDesktoptest.txt")

Change the code to:

open("C:\Users\Clay\Desktop\test.txt")

It is similar to the solution 2 that it also avoids the use of escape characters.

---

The above are three common solutions. We can run normally on Windows.

---

Reference

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37400974/unicode-error-unicodeescape-codec-cant-decode-bytes-in-position-2-3-trunca
• https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Error-unicodeescape-codec-can-t-decode-bytes/td-p/427540

---

Read More

• [Solved][Python] ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘cStringIO’

Introduction

Many times we get to see «UnicodeError: UnicodeDecodeError: ‘unicodeescape’ codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape» error in Python, and begin scratching our heads thinking about what to do next. Here, we will be seeing what this error actually means, what are its origins and how to fix it, without much effort.

What is Unicode Error in Python?

In Python, a UnicodeError is an exception that is raised when there is a problem working with Unicode strings. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as trying to decode an invalid Unicode character or trying to encode a character that is not supported by the chosen encoding.

What is a Unicode string?

In Python, a Unicode string is a sequence of Unicode characters. Unicode is a standardized character encoding that represents most of the world’s written languages.
In Python, you can use Unicode strings by prefixing your string with the u character.
For example:

# This is a Unicode string
my_string = u'Hello World!'

Unicode strings can contain any Unicode character, including special characters and characters from non-Latin scripts such as Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic. They are stored internally as a series of 16-bit integers, with each integer representing a Unicode code point.

Operations on Unicode String

You can use Unicode strings in Python just like you would use any other string. You can manipulate them with string methods, concatenate them with other strings, and so on.
To convert a Unicode string to a regular Python string, you can use the encode method and specify an encoding such as utf-8 or latin-1. To convert a regular Python string to a Unicode string, you can use the decode method and specify an encoding.
Given below is an example of encoding and decoding of a string in Python:-

# This is a Unicode string
my_string = u'Hello World!'
# Encode the string as a bytes object using the 'utf-8' encoding
my_bytes = my_string.encode('utf-8')
# Decode the bytes object back into a Unicode string using the 'utf-8' encoding
my_string = my_bytes.decode('utf-8')

Why “Unicode Error: unicodeescape codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3” error occurs?

The «UnicodeError: UnicodeDecodeError: ‘unicodeescape’ codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated UXXXXXXXX escape» error in Python is raised when the interpreter is trying to decode a string that contains a Unicode escape sequence, but the sequence is invalid or incomplete.

How “Unicode Error: unicodeescape codec can’t decode bytes in position 2-3” error occurs and its fixes?

Invalid Unicode characters:

If you are trying to decode a string that contains an invalid Unicode character, you will get a UnicodeError.
For example:

# This will cause a UnicodeError because the character 'u1234' is not a valid Unicode character
my_string = b'x80x81u1234x82'.decode('utf-8')

Unsupported encoding:

If you are trying to encode a string using an encoding that does not support certain characters, you will get a UnicodeError.
For example:

# This will cause a UnicodeError because the character 'u20ac' is not supported by the 'ascii' encoding
my_string = 'u20ac'.encode('ascii')

Mismatched encoding and decoding:

If you are trying to encode a string using one encoding and then decode it using a different encoding, you may get a UnicodeError if the two encodings are incompatible.
For example:

# This will cause a UnicodeError because the 'utf-8' encoding cannot decode the 'latin-1' encoding
my_string = 'u20ac'.encode('latin-1').decode('utf-8')

Invalid escape sequence:

If you have typed an invalid Unicode escape sequence, such as U123456, the interpreter will not be able to decode it and will raise this error.

Conclusions

To fix a UnicodeError, you will need to carefully review your code and identify the cause of the error. Make sure that you are using the correct encoding and decoding functions and that your strings do not contain any invalid or unsupported characters.