4.8.3 Standard Encodings
Python comes with a number of codecs built-in, either implemented as C functions or with dictionaries as mapping tables. The following table lists the codecs by name, together with a few common aliases, and the languages for which the encoding is likely used. Neither the list of aliases nor the list of languages is meant to be exhaustive. Notice that spelling alternatives that only differ in case or use a hyphen instead of an underscore are also valid aliases.
Many of the character sets support the same languages. They vary in individual characters (e.g. whether the EURO SIGN is supported or not), and in the assignment of characters to code positions. For the European languages in particular, the following variants typically exist:
- an ISO 8859 codeset
- a Microsoft Windows code page, which is typically derived from a 8859 codeset, but replaces control characters with additional graphic characters
- an IBM EBCDIC code page
- an IBM PC code page, which is ASCII compatible
| Codec | Aliases | Languages |
|---|---|---|
| ascii | 646, us-ascii | English |
| big5 | big5-tw, csbig5 | Traditional Chinese |
| big5hkscs | big5-hkscs, hkscs | Traditional Chinese |
| cp037 | IBM037, IBM039 | English |
| cp424 | EBCDIC-CP-HE, IBM424 | Hebrew |
| cp437 | 437, IBM437 | English |
| cp500 | EBCDIC-CP-BE, EBCDIC-CP-CH, IBM500 | Western Europe |
| cp737 | Greek | |
| cp775 | IBM775 | Baltic languages |
| cp850 | 850, IBM850 | Western Europe |
| cp852 | 852, IBM852 | Central and Eastern Europe |
| cp855 | 855, IBM855 | Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian |
| cp856 | Hebrew | |
| cp857 | 857, IBM857 | Turkish |
| cp860 | 860, IBM860 | Portuguese |
| cp861 | 861, CP-IS, IBM861 | Icelandic |
| cp862 | 862, IBM862 | Hebrew |
| cp863 | 863, IBM863 | Canadian |
| cp864 | IBM864 | Arabic |
| cp865 | 865, IBM865 | Danish, Norwegian |
| cp866 | 866, IBM866 | Russian |
| cp869 | 869, CP-GR, IBM869 | Greek |
| cp874 | Thai | |
| cp875 | Greek | |
| cp932 | 932, ms932, mskanji, ms-kanji | Japanese |
| cp949 | 949, ms949, uhc | Korean |
| cp950 | 950, ms950 | Traditional Chinese |
| cp1006 | Urdu | |
| cp1026 | ibm1026 | Turkish |
| cp1140 | ibm1140 | Western Europe |
| cp1250 | windows-1250 | Central and Eastern Europe |
| cp1251 | windows-1251 | Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian |
| cp1252 | windows-1252 | Western Europe |
| cp1253 | windows-1253 | Greek |
| cp1254 | windows-1254 | Turkish |
| cp1255 | windows-1255 | Hebrew |
| cp1256 | windows1256 | Arabic |
| cp1257 | windows-1257 | Baltic languages |
| cp1258 | windows-1258 | Vietnamese |
| euc_jp | eucjp, ujis, u-jis | Japanese |
| euc_jis_2004 | jisx0213, eucjis2004 | Japanese |
| euc_jisx0213 | eucjisx0213 | Japanese |
| euc_kr | euckr, korean, ksc5601, ks_c-5601, ks_c-5601-1987, ksx1001, ks_x-1001 | Korean |
| gb2312 | chinese, csiso58gb231280, euc-cn, euccn, eucgb2312-cn, gb2312-1980, gb2312-80, iso-ir-58 | Simplified Chinese |
| gbk | 936, cp936, ms936 | Unified Chinese |
| gb18030 | gb18030-2000 | Unified Chinese |
| hz | hzgb, hz-gb, hz-gb-2312 | Simplified Chinese |
| iso2022_jp | csiso2022jp, iso2022jp, iso-2022-jp | Japanese |
| iso2022_jp_1 | iso2022jp-1, iso-2022-jp-1 | Japanese |
| iso2022_jp_2 | iso2022jp-2, iso-2022-jp-2 | Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Western Europe, Greek |
| iso2022_jp_2004 | iso2022jp-2004, iso-2022-jp-2004 | Japanese |
| iso2022_jp_3 | iso2022jp-3, iso-2022-jp-3 | Japanese |
| iso2022_jp_ext | iso2022jp-ext, iso-2022-jp-ext | Japanese |
| iso2022_kr | csiso2022kr, iso2022kr, iso-2022-kr | Korean |
| latin_1 | iso-8859-1, iso8859-1, 8859, cp819, latin, latin1, L1 | West Europe |
| iso8859_2 | iso-8859-2, latin2, L2 | Central and Eastern Europe |
| iso8859_3 | iso-8859-3, latin3, L3 | Esperanto, Maltese |
| iso8859_4 | iso-8859-4, latin4, L4 | Baltic languagues |
| iso8859_5 | iso-8859-5, cyrillic | Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian |
| iso8859_6 | iso-8859-6, arabic | Arabic |
| iso8859_7 | iso-8859-7, greek, greek8 | Greek |
| iso8859_8 | iso-8859-8, hebrew | Hebrew |
| iso8859_9 | iso-8859-9, latin5, L5 | Turkish |
| iso8859_10 | iso-8859-10, latin6, L6 | Nordic languages |
| iso8859_13 | iso-8859-13 | Baltic languages |
| iso8859_14 | iso-8859-14, latin8, L8 | Celtic languages |
| iso8859_15 | iso-8859-15 | Western Europe |
| johab | cp1361, ms1361 | Korean |
| koi8_r | Russian | |
| koi8_u | Ukrainian | |
| mac_cyrillic | maccyrillic | Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian |
| mac_greek | macgreek | Greek |
| mac_iceland | maciceland | Icelandic |
| mac_latin2 | maclatin2, maccentraleurope | Central and Eastern Europe |
| mac_roman | macroman | Western Europe |
| mac_turkish | macturkish | Turkish |
| ptcp154 | csptcp154, pt154, cp154, cyrillic-asian | Kazakh |
| shift_jis | csshiftjis, shiftjis, sjis, s_jis | Japanese |
| shift_jis_2004 | shiftjis2004, sjis_2004, sjis2004 | Japanese |
| shift_jisx0213 | shiftjisx0213, sjisx0213, s_jisx0213 | Japanese |
| utf_16 | U16, utf16 | all languages |
| utf_16_be | UTF-16BE | all languages (BMP only) |
| utf_16_le | UTF-16LE | all languages (BMP only) |
| utf_7 | U7, unicode-1-1-utf-7 | all languages |
| utf_8 | U8, UTF, utf8 | all languages |
| utf_8_sig | all languages |
A number of codecs are specific to Python, so their codec names have no meaning outside Python. Some of them don't convert from Unicode strings to byte strings, but instead use the property of the Python codecs machinery that any bijective function with one argument can be considered as an encoding.
For the codecs listed below, the result in the ``encoding'' direction is always a byte string. The result of the ``decoding'' direction is listed as operand type in the table.
| Codec | Aliases | Operand type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| base64_codec | base64, base-64 | byte string | Convert operand to MIME base64 |
| bz2_codec | bz2 | byte string | Compress the operand using bz2 |
| hex_codec | hex | byte string | Convert operand to hexadecimal representation, with two digits per byte |
| idna | Unicode string | Implements RFC 3490. New in version 2.3. See also encodings.idna | |
| mbcs | dbcs | Unicode string | Windows only: Encode operand according to the ANSI codepage (CP_ACP) |
| palmos | Unicode string | Encoding of PalmOS 3.5 | |
| punycode | Unicode string | Implements RFC 3492. New in version 2.3. | |
| quopri_codec | quopri, quoted-printable, quotedprintable | byte string | Convert operand to MIME quoted printable |
| raw_unicode_escape | Unicode string | Produce a string that is suitable as raw Unicode literal in Python source code | |
| rot_13 | rot13 | Unicode string | Returns the Caesar-cypher encryption of the operand |
| string_escape | byte string | Produce a string that is suitable as string literal in Python source code | |
| undefined | any | Raise an exception for all conversions. Can be used as the system encoding if no automatic coercion between byte and Unicode strings is desired. | |
| unicode_escape | Unicode string | Produce a string that is suitable as Unicode literal in Python source code | |
| unicode_internal | Unicode string | Return the internal representation of the operand | |
| uu_codec | uu | byte string | Convert the operand using uuencode |
| zlib_codec | zip, zlib | byte string | Compress the operand using gzip |
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Python Library Reference |  |
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Release 2.5, documentation updated on 19th September, 2006.