Unicode errors when running playbook with unicode under ansible 1.9.6

[simfarm]

ISSUE TYPE

• Bug Report

ANSIBLE VERSION

[root@ip-10-65-202-196 _3120__ansible_playbooksgit_j]# ansible --version
ansible 1.9.6
  configured module search path = None

CONFIGURATION

All defaults.

OS / ENVIRONMENT

NA

SUMMARY

"UnicodeEncodeError" when running playbook with unicode.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

• Create this playbook, and call it utf-8-䉪ቒ칸ⱷꯔ噂폄蔆㪗輥.yml.
• Use the following inventory file:

[local]
127.0.0.1 ansible_connection=local ansible_python_interpreter='/usr/bin/env python'

EXPECTED RESULTS

Successful playbook run.

ACTUAL RESULTS

[root@ip-10-65-202-196 _3120__ansible_playbooksgit_j]# ansible-playbook -i inventory utf-8.yml 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/ansible-playbook", line 324, in <module>
    sys.exit(main(sys.argv[1:]))
  File "/usr/bin/ansible-playbook", line 264, in main
    pb.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/ansible/playbook/__init__.py", line 310, in run
    play = Play(self, play_ds, play_basedir, vault_password=self.vault_password)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/ansible/playbook/play.py", line 194, in __init__
    self._tasks      = self._load_tasks(self._ds.get('tasks', []), load_vars)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/ansible/playbook/play.py", line 606, in _load_tasks
    tokens = split_args(str(x['include']))
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 65-74: ordinal not in range(128)

[abadger]

Made a PR which should fix this on 1.9.x. Also tested devel and the problem is not present there.

[abadger]

Merged to stable-1.9. There are no plans for a 1.9.7 release but if one becomes necessary this fix will be in it.