Windows10 - UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte

[fenchu]

Steps to reproduce

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro,1703,64-bit

1. Install https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.2/python-3.6.2-amd64.exe, installs under c:\dist\python
2. Open bash/powershell and do pip install pylint
3. run pylint

There is no other python on the system. have tried reinstalling.

Current behavior

λ pylint
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\runpy.py", line 193, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", mod_spec)
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\runpy.py", line 85, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
  File "C:\dist\python\Scripts\pylint.exe\__main__.py", line 9, in <module>
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages\pylint\__init__.py", line 13, in run_pylint
    Run(sys.argv[1:])
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages\pylint\lint.py", line 1254, in __init__
    linter.read_config_file()
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages\pylint\config.py", line 635, in read_config_file
    parser.readfp(fp)
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\configparser.py", line 763, in readfp
    self.read_file(fp, source=filename)
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\configparser.py", line 718, in read_file
    self._read(f, source)
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\configparser.py", line 1015, in _read
    for lineno, line in enumerate(fp, start=1):
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\codecs.py", line 321, in decode
    (result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
  File "c:\dist\python\lib\encodings\utf_8_sig.py", line 69, in _buffer_decode
    return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, final)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte

it is the same in powershell, any other python program works fine

Could it be some python2/python3 and utf-8 missmatch?

Expected behavior

Works fine in windows bash (ubuntu 16.04):

$ pylint --version
No config file found, using default configuration
pylint 1.7.2,
astroid 1.5.3
Python 3.6.2 (default, Aug  8 2017, 09:25:03)
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609]

pylint --version output

λ pip freeze | findstr "pylint"
pylint==1.7.2

[fenchu]

λ pip3 install pylint
Requirement already satisfied: pylint in c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages
Requirement already satisfied: six in c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages (from pylint)
Requirement already satisfied: isort>=4.2.5 in c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages (from pylint)
Requirement already satisfied: astroid>=1.5.1 in c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages (from pylint)
Requirement already satisfied: colorama; sys_platform == "win32" in c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages (from pylint)
Requirement already satisfied: mccabe in c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages (from pylint)
Requirement already satisfied: lazy-object-proxy in c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages (from astroid>=1.5.1->pylint)
Requirement already satisfied: wrapt in c:\dist\python\lib\site-packages (from astroid>=1.5.1->pylint)

[PCManticore]

I see that you are using a different encoding that the usual one, can you get the output of chcp? Unfortunately pylint is mostly UTF-8 based, so having a less than usual encoding might trip it up.

[rogalski]

Looks like it's an exception from reading pylintrc file. Do you have matching file somewhere in your env?

[sldsrg]

In PowerShell session on Windows 10 command
pylint --generate-rcfile > $HOME/.pylintrc
produce .pylintrc file with UTF16 encoding, and cause aforementioned problem

[rogalski]

For now I'll close it as not a bug - since we do not support non-standard encodings in rcfile right now.

I'm not sure whether pylint eventually is supposed to support non-ascii / non-utf8 rc files. To be determined...

[jasonbu]

run chcp 65001
before run pip install pylint
in cmd or powershell.
solved this issue with my win10.

[andresgarcia0313]

chcp 65001 && pip install pylint && chcp 866 && pip install pylint

https://ss64.com/nt/chcp.html

[tristanbrown]

I encountered this bug when generating the .pylintrc file as described by @sldsrg (done in Windows 10, in the VS Code Powershell terminal). The chcp 65001 solution did not work for me.

I was able to fix it by opening my .pylintrc file in Notepad++, choosing the UTF-8 encoding there, and then saving the file. After that, the .pylintrc file remains in the proper format while editing and saving in VS Code.

[candu]

You can specify the encoding in PowerShell with Out-File:

pylint --generate-rcfile | Out-File -Encoding utf8 .pylintrc

[xiaoluolovestudy]

very useful, thanks