Why am I getting \'UnicodeDecodeError: \'utf-8\' codec can\'t decode byte 0xff...\' when reading a file in Python?

How to Resolve "Error UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte"?

Encountering this error in Python can arise when attempting to convert byte-array data to a Unicode string using the utf-8 encoding, but the byte sequence is invalid according to utf-8 rules.

The root cause in this case is that Python interprets the file contents as a utf-8-encoded string during the read operation. However, the file may contain non-utf-8 characters, such as a byte sequence (e.g., 0xff) that is not a valid start byte in utf-8.

To resolve this error, consider the nature of your file and apply the following solution:

Solution:

Since the file is likely a binary file, you should treat it as such. Modify the file reading code to use 'rb' as the open mode, as shown below:

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

By specifying 'rb', the file will be opened in binary mode, preserving the bytes as bytes rather than interpreting them as utf-8-encoded characters. This will prevent Python from attempting to decode the invalid byte sequence and avoid the exception.

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