# Couldn't Reload, what's wrong

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/couldnt-reload-whats-wrong/19893>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** python\
**Created:** [September 28, 2021, 10:28am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/couldnt-reload-whats-wrong/19893 "2021-09-28T10:28:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jumbojing](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/jumbojing/32/10811_2.png) [@jumbojing](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/jumbojing)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 10:28am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/couldnt-reload-whats-wrong/19893/1 "2021-09-28T10:28:01Z")

</div>

```auto
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - Traceback (most recent call last):
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "/Applications/Slice98.app/Contents/bin/Python/slicer/ScriptedLoadableModule.py", line 195, in onReload
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - slicer.util.reloadScriptedModule(self.moduleName)
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "/Applications/Slice98.app/Contents/bin/Python/slicer/util.py", line 1164, in reloadScriptedModule
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - moduleName, fp, filePath, ('.py', 'r', imp.PY_SOURCE))
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "/Applications/Slice98.app/Contents/lib/Python/lib/python3.6/imp.py", line 235, in load_module
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - return load_source(name, filename, file)
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "/Applications/Slice98.app/Contents/lib/Python/lib/python3.6/imp.py", line 170, in load_source
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - module = _exec(spec, sys.modules[name])
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 618, in _exec
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 674, in exec_module
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 780, in get_code
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "/Applications/Slice98.app/Contents/lib/Python/lib/python3.6/imp.py", line 156, in get_data
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - return file.read()
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - File "/Applications/Slice98.app/Contents/bin/../lib/Python/lib/python3.6/encodings/ascii.py", line 26, in decode
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - return codecs.ascii_decode(input, self.errors)[0]
[CRITICAL][Stream] 28.09.2021 18:24:37 [] (unknown:0) - UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe5 in position 1034: ordinal not in range(128)

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 1:22pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/couldnt-reload-whats-wrong/19893/2 "2021-09-28T13:22:19Z")

</div>

You used non-ASCII characters (probably international characters using UTF-8 encoding) in your source file.

Instead of writing unicode characters in your .py file, it is better if you write all the code and user-displayable text in English, using ASCII characters, and use translation infrastructure to replace it with text in any language, using UTF-8 encoding. Unfortunately, the translation infrastructure is not yet fully in place, but we have received funding recently and there should be significant progress in the coming months. See more information [here](https://github.com/Slicer/Slicer/wiki/I18N).

In the short term, you can try if adding `# coding: utf8` as the first line of your .py file fixes the issue. If that does not work, then you may need to replace utf-8 character by escape sequences. For example, instead of writing `résumé`, you can write `b"r\xc3\xa9sum\xc3\xa9".decode("utf-8")`

```auto
>>> "résumé".encode("utf-8")
b'r\xc3\xa9sum\xc3\xa9'

>>> b"r\xc3\xa9sum\xc3\xa9".decode("utf-8")
'résumé'

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jumbojing](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/jumbojing/32/10811_2.png) [@jumbojing](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/jumbojing)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 11:19am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/couldnt-reload-whats-wrong/19893/3 "2021-09-29T11:19:51Z")

</div>

我用了[Native-ASCII Converter - Visual Studio Marketplace](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=cwan.native-ascii-converter)

谢谢老师

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2021, 6:52pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/couldnt-reload-whats-wrong/19893/4 "2021-09-29T18:52:06Z")

</div>

On Windows and Linux module reload worked well with files using UTF-8 encoding, but apparently macOS had trouble. I’ve [added explicit specification of the encoding](https://github.com/Slicer/Slicer/commit/44ad869db6ab9e937dda2be7d14bfd7472742f4b), so you reloading will work if you use special characters in the file from tomorrow. That said, I would still highly recommend to keep the source code ASCII and use translation infrastructure to add messages in different languages.