Changing default encoding of python ?

Question

I have many "can't encode" and "can't decode" problems with python when I run my applications from console. But in Eclipse Pydev IDE, default character encoding is set to utf-8 and I'm fine.

I searched around for setting default encoding, and people say that python deletes the sys.setdefaultencoding function on startup and we can not use it.

So whats the best solution for it ?

Answer 1

See http://blog.ianbicking.org/illusive-setdefaultencoding.html.

Answer 2

One solution is to make sure Eclipse / Pydev does not run with utf-8 as default console encoding. Under the eclipse run dialog settings ("run configurations" iirc) you can choose the default encoding on the common tab. Change it to US-ASCII if you want to have these errors 'early' (in other words: in your Pydev environment).

Also see this link.