UnicodeDecodeError when changing files with an open project

[jhz21cn]

Description

What steps will reproduce the problem?

UnicodeDecodeError
just copy/modify some files in project folder

Traceback

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\AAA\miniconda3\envs\env_py312\Lib\site-packages\spyder\utils\workers.py", line 150, in _partial
    stdout = handle_qbytearray(raw_stdout, self._get_encoding())
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\AAA\miniconda3\envs\env_py312\Lib\site-packages\spyder\utils\workers.py", line 35, in handle_qbytearray
    return to_text_string(obj, encoding=encoding)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\AAA\miniconda3\envs\env_py312\Lib\site-packages\spyder\py3compat.py", line 57, in to_text_string
    return str(obj, encoding)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UnicodeDecodeError: 'gbk' codec can't decode byte 0xaf in position 925: illegal multibyte sequence
decoding with 'cp936' codec failed

Versions

• Spyder version: 6.0.0 (conda)
• Python version: 3.12.5 64-bit
• Qt version: 5.15.8
• PyQt5 version: 5.15.9
• Operating System: Windows-11-10.0.22631-SP0

Dependencies

# Mandatory:
aiohttp >=3.9.3                  :  3.10.5 (OK)
asyncssh >=2.14.0,<3.0.0         :  2.17.0 (OK)
atomicwrites >=1.2.0             :  1.4.1 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0                  :  5.2.0 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0              :  3.0.0 (OK)
cookiecutter >=1.6.0             :  2.6.0 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111      :  20230430 (OK)
github >=2.3.0                   :  2.4.0 (OK)
importlib_metadata >=4.6.0       :  8.5.0 (OK)
intervaltree >=3.0.2             :  3.1.0 (OK)
IPython >=8.13.0,<9.0.0,!=8.17.1 :  8.27.0 (OK)
jedi >=0.17.2,<0.20.0            :  0.19.1 (OK)
jellyfish >=0.7                  :  1.1.0 (OK)
jsonschema >=3.2.0               :  4.23.0 (OK)
keyring >=17.0.0                 :  25.4.0 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0                  :  7.16.4 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0                 :  1.8.0 (OK)
parso >=0.7.0,<0.9.0             :  0.8.4 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0                  :  4.9.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4                :  0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3                     :  6.0.0 (OK)
pygments >=2.0                   :  2.18.0 (OK)
pylint >=3.1,<4                  :  3.3.0 (OK)
pylint_venv >=3.0.2              :  3.0.3 (OK)
pyls_spyder >=0.4.0              :  0.4.0 (OK)
pylsp >=1.12.0,<1.13.0           :  1.12.0 (OK)
pylsp_black >=2.0.0,<3.0.0       :  2.0.0 (OK)
pyuca >=1.2                      :  1.2 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=3.2.0,<3.3.0        :  3.2.3 (OK)
qstylizer >=0.2.2                :  0.2.3 (OK)
qtawesome >=1.3.1,<1.4.0         :  1.3.1 (OK)
qtconsole >=5.6.0,<5.7.0         :  5.6.0 (OK)
qtpy >=2.4.0                     :  2.4.1 (OK)
rtree >=0.9.7                    :  1.3.0 (OK)
setuptools >=49.6.0              :  74.1.2 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6                   :  8.0.2 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=3.0.0,<3.1.0    :  3.0.0 (OK)
superqt >=0.6.2,<1.0.0           :  0.6.7 (OK)
textdistance >=4.2.0             :  4.6.2 (OK)
three_merge >=0.1.1              :  0.1.1 (OK)
watchdog >=0.10.3                :  5.0.2 (OK)
yarl >=1.9.4                     :  1.11.1 (OK)
zmq >=24.0.0                     :  26.2.0 (OK)

# Optional:
cython >=0.21                    :  None (NOK)
matplotlib >=3.0.0               :  None (NOK)
numpy >=1.7                      :  2.1.1 (OK)
pandas >=1.1.1                   :  2.2.3 (OK)
scipy >=0.17.0                   :  None (NOK)
sympy >=0.7.3                    :  None (NOK)

[ccordoba12]

Hey @jhz21cn, thanks for reporting. I think I understand what's happening but I'd need your help to debug and solve this problem because we don't have access to a Chinese Windows installation.

Do you have time to give me a hand with that?

[jhz21cn]

ok, what can i do next?

[ccordoba12]

Thanks for your help @jhz21cn!

Please close Spyder, open this file

C:\Users\AAA\miniconda3\envs\env_py312\Lib\site-packages\spyder\utils\workers.py

in a another text editor (e.g. Notepad++ or VSCode), go to this function:

spyder/spyder/utils/workers.py

Lines 126 to 137 in 071e163

	def _get_encoding(self):
	"""Return the encoding/codepage to use."""
	enco = 'utf-8'
	# Currently only cp1252 is allowed?
	if os.name == 'nt':
	import ctypes
	codepage = to_text_string(ctypes.cdll.kernel32.GetACP())
	# import locale
	# locale.getpreferredencoding() # Differences?
	enco = 'cp' + codepage
	return enco

and change line 131 to be

if False:
    import ctypes
    ...

That should fix this problem because I think that if is not necessary anymore.

[jhz21cn]

tested, fixed.