title: Pandas read_table errors
body: <p>I'm new to Python and trying to learn Pandas but running into a problem earlly on. I'm trying to read a log file and save it as a dataframe. It's a space delimited text file with a single header row containing the column names. Here's the sample code I'm running just to test the read function. </p>
  
  <pre><code>import pandas as pd
  data = pd.read_table('C:\Aerosonde Test Logs\MH_Data\TEC_20170105-083220\222_1_4435_.log',
                 delim_whitespace='True', nrows=20)
  print(data)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Below is a snippet of the log file. </p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;Clock&gt;[ms] &lt;Year&gt;  &lt;Month&gt; &lt;Day&gt;   &lt;Hours&gt; &lt;Minutes&gt;   &lt;Seconds&gt;   &lt;Lat&gt;[rad]  &lt;Lon&gt;[rad]  &lt;Height&gt;[m]
  48161   2017    1   5   4   30  13.366  5.02E-06    8.05E-07    267.37
  49161   2017    1   5   4   30  14.366  5.01E-06    7.95E-07    266.61
  50161   2017    1   5   4   30  15.366  5.02E-06    7.95E-07    266.24
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I keep getting errors though.  When I try and read the entire log file I'm getting the error. </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>"UnicodeEncodeError: 'mbcs' codec can't encode characters in position 0--1: invalid character"</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I tried opening the log file in Excel and then saving it again as a tab delimited file. When I tried to open that file using the same code I got a seperate error. </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>"TypeError: an integer is required"</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I tried skipping the header rows thinking the extra characters there were the problem but that didn't fix it either. So now I'm at a loss and hoping for some advice!</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: So thanks to Matteo I was able to fix the UnicodeEncodeError by adding '\' to the filepath string.  Now though I get the TypeError: an integer is required when trying to open the log file.  I appear to get it when trying to open any space or tab delimeted file. I just made a quick space delimeted file and I get the same error. I even looked at the data in a hex editor to double check and I don't see any odd bytes so no idea whats happening.</p>
  
  <p>Current read table code</p>
  
  <pre><code>data = pd.read_table('C:\\Aerosonde Test Logs\\MH_Data\\TEC_20170105-083220\\TestLogFile.txt',
                 delim_whitespace='True')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/mzl7B.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">HexData for test text file</a></p>