fix(cli): reconfigure stdout to UTF-8 so redirected output is lossless (#1802) by haosenwang1018 · Pull Request #1864 · microsoft/markitdown

haosenwang1018 · 2026-05-06T18:11:13Z

Issue

Root cause

The CLI's stdout output path used the OS console codepage (cp1252/gbk/etc. on Windows) and re-encoded the converted markdown with errors="replace" to avoid raising:

print(
    result.markdown.encode(sys.stdout.encoding, errors="replace").decode(
        sys.stdout.encoding
    )
)

That suppresses UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters (the symptom #1802 reports) but silently replaces every non-encodable character with ?. A user running markitdown foo.docx > foo.md on Windows ends up with bullet points, em-dashes, CJK, etc. all turned into ? in the output file. From the reporter's perspective the bug is "the converted markdown is corrupt" — even though no error is raised.

#1788's traceback shows the older pre-errors="replace" version did raise UnicodeEncodeError outright, which is what the existing replace path was patching. The fix here addresses both issues at once.

Fix

Reconfigure sys.stdout to UTF-8 before printing so the redirected file is faithful to the source. sys.stdout.reconfigure is a 3.7+ TextIOWrapper method; if it's unavailable (some embedded interpreters, non-standard stdout shims) we fall through to print and only re-encode with errors="replace" if a UnicodeEncodeError is actually raised. That preserves the previous "never crash" guarantee without paying the lossy cost on the common path.

Tests

test_handle_output_to_file_preserves_unicode pins the existing file-output utf-8 contract.
test_handle_output_to_stdout_reconfigures_to_utf8 asserts sys.stdout.reconfigure(encoding="utf-8") is invoked and the payload survives unchanged through capsys.
test_handle_output_falls_back_when_reconfigure_unavailable covers the defensive replace path on a fake stdout that has no reconfigure and a strict ASCII codec — should not raise.

$ pytest tests/test_cli_stdout_unicode.py
3 passed in 1.37s

Closes microsoft#1802 Refs microsoft#1788 The CLI's stdout output path used the OS console codepage (``cp1252``/``gbk``/etc. on Windows) and re-encoded the converted markdown with ``errors="replace"`` to avoid raising. That suppressed ``UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters`` but silently replaced every non-encodable character (bullets, em-dashes, CJK, ...) with ``?`` — so users running ``markitdown foo.docx > foo.md`` on Windows got corrupted output by default. Reconfigure ``sys.stdout`` to UTF-8 before printing so the redirected file is faithful to the source. ``sys.stdout.reconfigure`` is a 3.7+ TextIOWrapper method; if it's unavailable (some embedded interpreters, non-standard stdout shims) we fall through to ``print`` and only re-encode with ``errors="replace"`` if a ``UnicodeEncodeError`` is actually raised. That preserves the previous "never crash on unicode" guarantee without paying the lossy cost on the common path. Tests: - ``test_handle_output_to_file_preserves_unicode`` pins the file output contract (already utf-8, but worth a regression guard alongside the stdout changes). - ``test_handle_output_to_stdout_reconfigures_to_utf8`` asserts that ``sys.stdout.reconfigure(encoding="utf-8")`` is invoked AND that the payload survives unchanged through ``capsys``. - ``test_handle_output_falls_back_when_reconfigure_unavailable`` covers the defensive replace path on a fake stdout that has no ``reconfigure`` and a strict ASCII codec — should not raise. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

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fix(cli): reconfigure stdout to UTF-8 so redirected output is lossless (#1802)#1864

fix(cli): reconfigure stdout to UTF-8 so redirected output is lossless (#1802)#1864
haosenwang1018 wants to merge 1 commit into
microsoft:mainfrom
haosenwang1018:fix/1802-cli-stdout-utf8-reconfigure

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haosenwang1018 commented May 6, 2026

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