How to convert dict values to be strange character compliant in python?
<p>I am getting a UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes... invalid start byte.</p>

<p>I suspect it has to do with one of the values in my dictionary. To access all fields and put them into a dict, I use:</p>

<pre><code>        mydictionary = {x:y for x,y in zip(column, values)}
</code></pre>

<p>What could I change to make it so that I can guarantee that the values could be converted into some way that is utf8 compliant or to avoid this error?</p>

<p>column contains all column headers... values contains a tuple with all values that correspond to the column</p>

<p>i.e.
column = ('NAME', HOBBY')
values = ('George', 'Basketball')</p>

<p>The issue I am having is that somewhere in values, there is something going on thats like:
values = ('-insert strange utf8 noncompliant character-George', 'Basketball')</p>
