jrnl crashing with utf-8 codec message on folder journal

[AymaneHrouch]

Diagnostic output

jrnl: v4.0-beta2
Python: 3.10.6 (main, Mar 10 2023, 10:55:28) [GCC 11.3.0]
OS: Linux 5.19.0-38-generic

Current Behavior

┏━ Error ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ UnicodeDecodeError ┃
┃ 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xa0 in position 6038: invalid start byte ┃
┃ ┃
┃ This is probably a bug. Please file an issue at: ┃
┃ https://github.com/jrnl-org/jrnl/issues/new/choose ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Expected Behavior

I'm not sur.

Repro Steps

This is my first time running jrnl and I got this error (After answering the initializing questions, path of journal, do i want to use colos, etc.)

Debug output

Output

[12:11:57] DEBUG    Logging start                                                                                                                                      main.py:32
           DEBUG    Parsed args:                                                                                                                                       main.py:42
                    Namespace(debug=True, preconfig_cmd=None, postconfig_cmd=None, filename=None, template=None, on_date=None, today_in_history=False, month=None,               
                    day=None, year=None, start_date=None, end_date=None, contains=None, strict=False, starred=False, tagged=False, limit=None, excluded=[],                      
                    edit=False, delete=False, change_time=None, export=False, tags=False, short=False, config_override=[], config_file_path='', text=[],                         
                    exclude_starred=False, exclude_tagged=False)                                                                                                                 
           DEBUG    Reading configuration from file /home/aymane/.config/jrnl/jrnl.yaml                                                                             install.py:91
           DEBUG    Using configuration:                                                                                                                           install.py:117
                    "{                                                                                                                                                           
                        'colors': {                                                                                                                                              
                            'body': 'none',                                                                                                                                      
                            'date': 'black',                                                                                                                                     
                            'tags': 'yellow',                                                                                                                                    
                            'title': 'cyan'                                                                                                                                      
                        },                                                                                                                                                       
                        'default_hour': 9,                                                                                                                                       
                        'default_minute': 0,                                                                                                                                     
                        'editor': '',                                                                                                                                            
                        'encrypt': False,                                                                                                                                        
                        'highlight': True,                                                                                                                                       
                        'indent_character': '|',                                                                                                                                 
                        'journals': {'default': {'journal': '/home/aymane/Desktop'}},                                                                                            
                        'linewrap': 79,                                                                                                                                          
                        'tagsymbols': '#@',                                                                                                                                      
                        'template': False,                                                                                                                                       
                        'timeformat': '%F %r',                                                                                                                                   
                        'version': 'v4.0-beta2'                                                                                                                                  
                    }"                                                                                                                                                           
           DEBUG    Using journal name: default                                                                                                                     config.py:249
           DEBUG    Updating configuration with specific journal overrides:                                                                                         config.py:154
                    {'journal': '/home/aymane/Desktop'}                                                                                                                          
           DEBUG    Scoped config:                                                                                                                                  config.py:163
                    {                                                                                                                                                            
                        'colors': {                                                                                                                                              
                            'body': 'none',                                                                                                                                      
                            'date': 'black',                                                                                                                                     
                            'tags': 'yellow',                                                                                                                                    
                            'title': 'cyan'                                                                                                                                      
                        },                                                                                                                                                       
                        'default_hour': 9,                                                                                                                                       
                        'default_minute': 0,                                                                                                                                     
                        'editor': '',                                                                                                                                            
                        'encrypt': False,                                                                                                                                        
                        'highlight': True,                                                                                                                                       
                        'indent_character': '|',                                                                                                                                 
                        'journals': {'default': {'journal': '/home/aymane/Desktop'}},                                                                                            
                        'linewrap': 79,                                                                                                                                          
                        'tagsymbols': '#@',                                                                                                                                      
                        'template': False,                                                                                                                                       
                        'timeformat': '%F %r',                                                                                                                                   
                        'version': 'v4.0-beta2',                                                                                                                                 
                        'journal': '/home/aymane/Desktop'                                                                                                                        
                    }                                                                                                                                                            
           DEBUG    open_journal 'default'                                                                                                                         Journal.py:471
  File "/home/aymane/Desktop/code/python/jrnl/jrnl/main.py", line 44, in run
    status_code = controller.run(args)
  File "/home/aymane/Desktop/code/python/jrnl/jrnl/controller.py", line 70, in run
    journal = open_journal(args.journal_name, config)
  File "/home/aymane/Desktop/code/python/jrnl/jrnl/journals/Journal.py", line 497, in open_journal
    return Folder(journal_name, **config).open()
  File "/home/aymane/Desktop/code/python/jrnl/jrnl/journals/FolderJournal.py", line 41, in open
    journal = f.read()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/codecs.py", line 701, in read
    return self.reader.read(size)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/codecs.py", line 504, in read
    newchars, decodedbytes = self.decode(data, self.errors)
╭─────────────────────────────── Traceback (most recent call last) ────────────────────────────────╮
│ /home/aymane/Desktop/code/python/jrnl/jrnl/main.py:44 in run                                     │
│                                                                                                  │
│   43 │   │                                                                                       │
│ ❱ 44 │   │   status_code = controller.run(args)                                                  │
│   45                                                                                             │
│                                                                                                  │
│ /home/aymane/Desktop/code/python/jrnl/jrnl/controller.py:70 in run                               │
│                                                                                                  │
│    69 │   # Get the journal we're going to be working with                                       │
│ ❱  70 │   journal = open_journal(args.journal_name, config)                                      │
│    71                                                                                            │
│                                                                                                  │
│ /home/aymane/Desktop/code/python/jrnl/jrnl/journals/Journal.py:497 in open_journal               │
│                                                                                                  │
│   496 │   │   │                                                                                  │
│ ❱ 497 │   │   │   return Folder(journal_name, **config).open()                                   │
│   498                                                                                            │
│                                                                                                  │
│ /home/aymane/Desktop/code/python/jrnl/jrnl/journals/FolderJournal.py:41 in open                  │
│                                                                                                  │
│    40 │   │   │   with codecs.open(filename, "r", "utf-8") as f:                                 │
│ ❱  41 │   │   │   │   journal = f.read()                                                         │
│    42 │   │   │   │   self.entries.extend(self._parse(journal))                                  │
│                                                                                                  │
│ /usr/lib/python3.10/codecs.py:701 in read                                                        │
│                                                                                                  │
│    700 │   │                                                                                     │
│ ❱  701 │   │   return self.reader.read(size)                                                     │
│    702                                                                                           │
│                                                                                                  │
│ /usr/lib/python3.10/codecs.py:504 in read                                                        │
│                                                                                                  │
│    503 │   │   │   try:                                                                          │
│ ❱  504 │   │   │   │   newchars, decodedbytes = self.decode(data, self.errors)                   │
│    505 │   │   │   except UnicodeDecodeError as exc:                                             │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xa0 in position 6038: invalid start byte
┏━ Error ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃  UnicodeDecodeError                                                         ┃
┃  'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xa0 in position 6038: invalid start byte  ┃
┃                                                                             ┃
┃  This is probably a bug. Please file an issue at:                           ┃
┃  https://github.com/jrnl-org/jrnl/issues/new/choose                         ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Other Information

No response

[AymaneHrouch]

My bad I specified a folder instead of a text file

[micahellison]

Thanks for documenting the solution here. We hope to prevent this error soon once we finish the solution to #1692.