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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