codecs_encode_error.py

#1/usr/bin/env python

# this is from The Python
# Standard Library by example
# ISBN13: 9780321767349

import codecs
import sys

error_handling = sys.argv[1]

text = u'pi: \u03c0'

try:
    # Save the data, encoded as ASCII, using the error
    # handling mode specified on the command line.
    with codecs.open('encode_error.txt', 'w',
                     encoding='ascii',
                     errors=error_handling) as f:
        f.write(text)

except UnicodeEncodeError, err:
    print 'ERROR:', err

else:
    # If there was no error writing to the file.
    # show what it contains.
    with open('encode_error.txt', 'rb') as f:
        print 'File contents:', repr(f.read())

"""
usage:

$ python codecs_encode_error.py strict
ERROR: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u03c0'
in position 4: ordinal not in range(128)

$ python codecs_encode_error.py replace
File contents: 'pi: ?'

$ python codecs_encode_error.py ignore
File contents: 'pi: '

$ python codecs_encode_error.py xmlcharrefreplace
File contents: 'pi: π'
"""