Sometimes, we want to fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python.
In this article, we’ll look at how to fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python.
How to fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python?
To fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python, we should call read to read the file into a string.
For instance, we write
with open(path, 'rb') as f:
contents = f.read()
to call open to open the file at path as a binary with 'rb'.
Then we call f.read to read the file into a string within the with block.
Conclusion
To fix error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte error with Python, we should call read to read the file into a string.