enabling Unicode support in VS Code's console

unicode_vscode.py

# If you're scanning the file system in Python, you will eventually come across filenames
# that can't be displayed in the VS Code console because they contain characters that
# will raise a UnicodeDecode Error. Opening sys.stdout as shown below fixes this problem.

# this ensures the console will handle Unicode characters
import sys
sys.stdout = open(sys.stdout.fileno(), mode='w', encoding='utf8', buffering=1)

# the following print() statement crashes in the VS Code console window with a
# UnicodeDecodeError if you DON'T set sys.stdout as shown above
print('A few Unicode characters: ® Σ Α Π Φ Ω')