Python 3: How to specify stdin encoding
Python 3 does not expect ASCII from sys.stdin. It'll open stdin in text mode and make an educated guess as to what encoding is used. That guess may come down to ASCII, but that is not a given. See the sys.stdin documentation on how the codec is selected.
Like other file objects opened in text mode, the sys.stdin object derives from the io.TextIOBase base class; it has a .buffer attribute pointing to the underlying buffered IO instance (which in turn has a .raw attribute).
Wrap the sys.stdin.buffer attribute in a new io.TextIOWrapper() instance to specify a different encoding:
import ioimport sysinput_stream = io.TextIOWrapper(sys.stdin.buffer, encoding='utf-8')Alternatively, set the PYTHONIOENCODING environment variable to the desired codec when running python.
From Python 3.7 onwards, you can also reconfigure the existing std* wrappers, provided you do it at the start (before any data has been read):
# Python 3.7 and newersys.stdin.reconfigure(encoding='utf-8')