[FIXED] Error when printing a variable in ipdb: UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\u22f1' in position 314: ordinal not in range(12)

Issue

I was debugging a Python 3 script and every time I tried to print a variable, it gave me the following error:

ipdb> inputs
*** UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\u22f1' in
  position 314: ordinal not in range(12)

I tried to set the default encoding to UTF-8 using sys.setdefaultencoding() and adding # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- at the top of the script, but both didn't work.

Solution

TL;DR: export LANG=C.UTF-8

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@mike explains that it happens because Python picks the encoding setting from the environment it's been initiated from. If it can't find a proper encoding, it falls back to its default, 'ascii'.

My solution was to change the locale as described in this answer. Thus, I tried to set export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and, to my surprise, it didn't work. However, when I tried another locale, export LANG=C.UTF-8 as suggested by another answer, it worked.

Answered By - Yamaneko