Trouble with running words through text files and counting them - file

Question

Python 3+
This is the error i get
This is my code
I want the user to input some words, then the program should run each word through my two textfiles, if the word exists in any of them, I want the program to add +1 to the positive/negative count list.
Thank you for your help :)

Answer 1

Seems like you have stumbled upon a Decoding error when trying to open one of the input files in the wordlist function. it is usually hard to determine the encoding used for a particular file. so you could :
1.Try opening the file with a different encoding such as ISO-8859-15,etc.
def OpenFile():
try:
with open("My File.txt",mode="r",encoding="IS0-8859-15")
#do process My File
except UnicodeDecodeError:
print("Something went Wrong Try a different file encoding")
else:
#everything was okay, return the required
finally:
# clean up here
2. Look it modules that try and determine the correct encoding for the file such as the chardet module
Install the
chardet module :
sudo pip3 install chardet
you can run it at the command line with your file as the Argument to determine the encoding
cd /path/to/File/
chardetect My\ File.txt
this should return the likely encoding for the given file
3.You can use the chardet module inside your python code however this is recommended in a case where you will be opening a file you do not have access to e.g at a clients computer whom wants to open another specified file
and reopening the same file and redetecting the encoding will cause your program to be slow.

Answer 2

First of all positive_count and negative_count should be integers and not lists. If you wish to count, adding 1 to the list isn't really what you're trying to accomplish.
Second of all, the UnicodeDecodeError is there because the encoding of the underlying file is not utf-8. Did you try utf-16 or utf-16-le? In case you're using Windows, utf-16-le is probably the encoding used unless you're using code-points in which case guessing will be a nightmare.