Whenever I use any of the decode methods in the codecs
package, or use a string's encode or decode method, I
get the error: UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't
decode byte 0x88 in position 0: ordinal not in
range(128). That character it's referring to is a ê (e
with circonflex if you can't see it for whatever
reason). I don't know why this is happening, and I've
tried a dozen different ways to try and get it to work.
Please fix this horrible bug! I can't decode any files! 

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The ASCII codec can't handle non-ASCII characters
and that's perfectly normal. Please provide more
context.

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Joe, does this code work for you?

s = '\x88'
u = s.decode('cp850')

If it does work fine, then either you don't supply the 
<encoding> argument to decode/encode, or you try to print 
the result; in either of these two cases, it's not a Python bug.

PS Since e-circumflex is \x88 for you, I assume you run this in 
the Python command line.

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Joe, does this code work for you?

s = '\x88'
u = s.decode('cp850')

If it does work fine, then either you don't supply the 
<encoding> argument to decode/encode, or you try to print 
the result; in either of these two cases, it's not a Python bug.

PS Since e-circumflex is \x88 for you, I assume you run this in 
the Python command line.

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user_id=539787

Joe, does this code work for you?

s = '\x88'
u = s.decode('cp850')

If it does work fine, then either you don't supply the 
<encoding> argument to decode/encode, or you try to print 
the result; in either of these two cases, it's not a Python bug.

PS Since e-circumflex is \x88 for you, I assume you run this in 
the Python command line.

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Forgive my multiple posting (SF reported an error), and 
substitute "Windows command line" for "Python command line" 
in the last paragraph.

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Yes I am using Python command line. What else would I use? 
Anyway, your method works too, but someone told me to put 
u"ê".encode('cp437') in my code and that works. Thank you 
anyway.