SyntaxError: (unicode error) ‘unicodeescape’ codec can’t decode bytes in position truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

May 9

Posted by

This is a common error in python when you are reading from a file and have specified a file path String. You can usually fix this by placing an ‘r’ in the front of your string to change it to a raw string.

Before fix (code has the issue)

book = epub.read_epub("C:\Users\ronni\Desktop\ebook\Frankenstein.epub")

After fix (issue is resolved)

book = epub.read_epub(r"C:\Users\ronni\Desktop\ebook\Frankenstein.epub")

Explanation

Python interprets “\” within a string as a special escape character. In this example, the \U in position 2-3 is a unicode escape character. Adding ‘r’ instructs the python interpreter to instead treat the string as a raw literal.

References

https://blog.softhints.com/python/

https://www.askpython.com/python/string/python-raw-strings

https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html

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About Ronnie Diaz

Ronnie Diaz is a software engineer and tech consultant. Ronnie started his career in front-end and back-end development for companies in ecommerce, service industries and remote education. This work transitioned from traditional desktop client-server applications through early cloud development. Software included human resource management and service technician workflows, online retail e-commerce and electronic ordering and fulfillment, IVR customer relational systems, and video streaming remote learning SCORM web applications. Hands on server experience and software performance optimization led to creation of a startup business focused on collocated data center services and continued experience with video streaming hardware and software. This led to a career in Amazon Prime Video where Ronnie is currently employed, building software and systems which stream live sports and events for millions of viewers around the world.

Posted on May 9, 2021, in Programming & Development and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.

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