sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8') breaks print and %%time

[supern8ent]

I use pandas and since a recent update (sorry I don't know what the old version was, but now I'm at ipython 3.0.0 and pandas 0.15.2) I need to set

import sys
reload(sys)
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')

in order to view the html version of a dataframe, otherwise I get UnicodeDecodeError.

Unfortunately, this workaround has the side-effect that I no longer see output from print statements and %%time.

Per rkern, more specifically what pandas content breaks in my case:

pd.DataFrame({'x':[u'water, 38.71 mg/L @ 25 \xb0C (est), water, 14.1 mg/L @ 25 \xb0C (exp)']})

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
UnicodeDecodeError                        Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-29-eaddc9d8e339> in <module>()
----> 1 pd.DataFrame({'x':[u'water, 38.71 mg/L @ 25 \xb0C (est), water, 14.1 mg/L @ 25 \xb0C (exp)']})

/Users/nathan/.virtualenvs/A1/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/displayhook.pyc in __call__(self, result)
    236                 self.write_format_data(format_dict, md_dict)
    237                 self.log_output(format_dict)
--> 238             self.finish_displayhook()
    239 
    240     def cull_cache(self):

/Users/nathan/.virtualenvs/A1/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/kernel/zmq/displayhook.pyc in finish_displayhook(self)
     70         sys.stderr.flush()
     71         if self.msg['content']['data']:
---> 72             self.session.send(self.pub_socket, self.msg, ident=self.topic)
     73         self.msg = None
     74 

/Users/nathan/.virtualenvs/A1/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/kernel/zmq/session.pyc in send(self, stream, msg_or_type, content, parent, ident, buffers, track, header, metadata)
    647         if self.adapt_version:
    648             msg = adapt(msg, self.adapt_version)
--> 649         to_send = self.serialize(msg, ident)
    650         to_send.extend(buffers)
    651         longest = max([ len(s) for s in to_send ])

/Users/nathan/.virtualenvs/A1/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/kernel/zmq/session.pyc in serialize(self, msg, ident)
    551             content = self.none
    552         elif isinstance(content, dict):
--> 553             content = self.pack(content)
    554         elif isinstance(content, bytes):
    555             # content is already packed, as in a relayed message

/Users/nathan/.virtualenvs/A1/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/kernel/zmq/session.pyc in <lambda>(obj)
     83 # disallow nan, because it's not actually valid JSON
     84 json_packer = lambda obj: jsonapi.dumps(obj, default=date_default,
---> 85     ensure_ascii=False, allow_nan=False,
     86 )
     87 json_unpacker = lambda s: jsonapi.loads(s)

/Users/nathan/.virtualenvs/A1/lib/python2.7/site-packages/zmq/utils/jsonapi.pyc in dumps(o, **kwargs)
     38         kwargs['separators'] = (',', ':')
     39 
---> 40     s = jsonmod.dumps(o, **kwargs)
     41 
     42     if isinstance(s, unicode):

/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.pyc in dumps(obj, skipkeys, ensure_ascii, check_circular, allow_nan, cls, indent, separators, encoding, default, sort_keys, **kw)
    248         check_circular=check_circular, allow_nan=allow_nan, indent=indent,
    249         separators=separators, encoding=encoding, default=default,
--> 250         sort_keys=sort_keys, **kw).encode(obj)
    251 
    252 

/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/encoder.pyc in encode(self, o)
    208         if not isinstance(chunks, (list, tuple)):
    209             chunks = list(chunks)
--> 210         return ''.join(chunks)
    211 
    212     def iterencode(self, o, _one_shot=False):

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc2 in position 81: ordinal not in range(128)

Add the workaround:

import sys
reload(sys)
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')

pd.DataFrame({'x':[u'water, 38.71 mg/L @ 25 \xb0C (est), water, 14.1 mg/L @ 25 \xb0C (exp)']})

and I get the table with the text as you would expect.

[rkern]

Please provide an example of how the HTML version of a dataframe gives you a UnicodeDecodeError. That's the bug to fix. The bug may be in Pandas.

sys.setdefaultencoding() should never be used, so the fact that setting it breaks other stuff is not something to worry about.

[takluyver]

I think we're already tracking the issue with displaying DataFrames as #6799.

I agree with @rkern that sys.setdefaultencoding() should be expected to break stuff.

[takluyver]

And it looks like Min already fixed that, so non-ascii data frames should work in 3.1.

Or you can upgrade to Python 3, where unicode generally isn't a problem.

[supern8ent]

Thanks for clearing that up!