Why Does Python Throw a \'UnicodeDecodeError: \'utf-8\' codec can\'t decode byte 0xff...\' Error When Opening a File?

Troubleshooting: "UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff..." in Python Tools/Process.py

While compiling "process.py" from the pix2pix-tensorflow repository, Python raises the error "UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte." Upon tracing the error, it points to line 113 in "process.py":

<code class="python">contents = open(path).read()</code>

Understanding the Error:

Python attempts to decode a byte array representing a UTF-8-encoded string into a Unicode string. During this decoding process, it encounters the invalid byte sequence "0xff" at the beginning of the byte array. This byte sequence is not permitted in UTF-8 encoding, causing the error.

Possible Cause:

The path provided to the open() function likely contains binary data that is not UTF-8 encoded. This means that Python expects text data and encounters non-textual characters, leading to the decoding failure.

Solution:

To resolve the error, it is necessary to handle the file in binary mode. This prevents Python from attempting to decode the binary data as text. Here's how to do this:

<code class="python">with open(path, 'rb') as f:
  contents = f.read()</code>

By adding 'b' to the open() mode, the file is treated as binary, and the contents are read as bytes instead of attempting to decode them as text. This should resolve the UnicodeDecodeError.

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