Is 'encoding is an invalid keyword' error

Question

Ansi to UTF-8 using python causing error

I tried the answer there to convert ansi to utf-8.

import io

with io.open(file_path_ansi, encoding='latin-1', errors='ignore') as source:
    with open(file_path_utf8, mode='w', encoding='utf-8') as target:
        shutil.copyfileobj(source, target)

But I got "TypeError: 'encoding' is an invalid keyword argument for this function"

I tried with

with io.open(file_path_ansi, encoding='cp1252', errors='ignore') as source:

, too, and got same error.

Then I tried

import io

with io.open(file_path_ansi, encoding='latin-1', errors='ignore') as source:
    with io.open(file_path_utf8, mode='w', encoding='utf-8') as target:
        shutil.copyfileobj(source, target)

and still got the same error. Also I tried with cp1252, too, but got the same error.

I learned from several stackoverflow questions that

TypeError: 'encoding' is an invalid keyword argument for this function

is frequently arising error message in python 2.x

But mainly answerers were suggesting using python 3 in some way or the other.

Is it really impossible to convert ansi txt to utf-8 txt in python 2.x ? (I use 2.7)

Answer 1

I had the same issue when I did try to write bytes to file. So my point is, bytes are already encoded. So when you use encoding keyword this leads to an error.

Answer 2

For Python2.7, Use io.open() in both locations.

import io
import shutil

with io.open('/etc/passwd', encoding='latin-1', errors='ignore') as source:
    with io.open('/tmp/goof', mode='w', encoding='utf-8') as target:
        shutil.copyfileobj(source, target)

The above program runs without errors on my PC.

Answer 3

This is how you can convert ansi to utf-8 in Python 2 (you just use normal file objects):

with open(file_path_ansi, "r") as source:
    with open(file_path_utf8, "w") as target:
        target.write(source.read().decode("latin1").encode("utf8"))

Answer 4

TypeError: 'encoding' is an invalid keyword argument for this function

open('textfile.txt', encoding='utf-16')

Use io, it will work in both 2.7 and 3.6 python version

import io
io.open('textfile.txt', encoding='utf-16')