Error: 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes

[stanleychen]

When i run the code: tables = camelot.read_pdf('C:\Users\stanleychen\Desktop\MR2-PL1.pdf') in Python tools, the following error was noted. What i should do to avoid it? Thank you.

  File "<ipython-input-4-d9a6999f73bb>", line 2
    tables = camelot.read_pdf('C:\Users\stanleychen\Desktop\MR2-PL1.pdf')
                             ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

[PaulN · Accepted solution]

Hi @stanleychen,

The error is caused by the interpretation of escape characters (any sequence starting with '\'). In particular, "\U" introduces a 32-bit unicode character 

You should use a raw string to avoid such behaviour (r"xxx")

  tables = camelot.read_pdf(r"C:\Users\stanleychen\Desktop\MR2-PL1.pdf")

See https://docs.python.org/3.6/reference/lexical_analysis.html, 2.4.1. String and Bytes literals both escape characters and raw strings.

Best,

PaulN

[warrenfelsh]

Unicode String types are a handy Python feature that allows you to decode encoded Strings and forget about the encoding until you need to write or transmit the data. Python tries to convert a byte-array (a bytes which it assumes to be a utf-8-encoded string) to a unicode string (str). This process of course is a decoding according to utf-8 rules. When it tries this, it encounters a python byte sequence which is not allowed in utf-8-encoded strings (namely this 0xff at position 0). One simple way to avoid this error is to encode such strings with encode() function as follows (if a is the string with non-ascii character):

a.encode('utf-8').strip()

Or

Use encoding format ISO-8859-1 to solve the issue.

[david_alvas]

To Solve SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape Error You just need to put r before your path string Just like this pandas.read_csv(r”C:\Users\ssc\Desktop\account_summery.csv”) OR Just Use double quotes and forwardslash character. Third solution is Just Use double quotes and forwardslash character.

https://exerror.com/syntaxerror-unicode-error-unicodeescape-codec-cant-decode-bytes-in-position-2-3-...