python encoding and decoding strings

Question

I am reading a first and last name in Python from a file and am having trouble with encoding. I want to print out the name, but am getting "UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u021b' in position 11: character maps to undefined" with this code:

 first = obj.first_name.encode('utf-8')
 last = obj.last_name.encode('utf-8')
 first = first.decode('utf-8')
 last = last.decode('utf-8')
 print(first)

What is the problem?

Answer 1

The problem is that your output terminal/console doesn't have any way of displaying ț. Try chcp 65001 before running the script if you're using Windows.