Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Reading Files

Stheven Cabral
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Stheven Cabral
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 29,854 Points
Posted by Stheven Cabral
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Stheven Cabral
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 29,854 Points

What Does UTF-8 mean?

In the Reading Files video, Kenneth uses the code:

names_file = open("names.txt", encoding="utf-8")

What does the encoding="utf-8" do?

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

UTF-8 is an abbreviation of *8-bit Unicode Transformation Format", a common scheme used for representing characters including letters, numbers, and both standard and special symbols.

Setting "encoding" to this value tells the system what to expect the file contents to be like. For more details on how Python handles character representation, see the codecs portion of the Python reference manual.