Martin, thanks for your response.

I have to take it, although I am not really convinced. The system codepage probably differs from the console codepage (here 1152 vs. 850). Print statements on the other hand are typical for console programs. Calling python.exe (vs. pythonw.exe) means console program means print output has to use console codepage as default.

It is disappointing that output changes and programs fail because of a command line redirection.