[Wintermute0110]

AML 0.9.12 gets this error with MAME 0.223 when running All in One in Setup Plugin:

...

Changing line 1448 in disk_IO.py from this:

python:
return hashlib.md5(prop_key).hexdigest()

to this:

python:
return hashlib.md5(prop_key.encode('utf-8')).hexdigest()

will avoid the error, although I do not know if this is a valid fix.

Thanks for reporting @Dax9 Yes, that fix is valid. I am now converting AML from Python 2 into Python 3 and I did the same fix because Python 3 is more strict about encoding handling. By the way, I think the Python 3 version of AML will be finished within a week. I will release 0.10.0 for Kodi Leia and Python 2 and 1.0.0 for Kodi Matrix and Python 3.

If you like the technicalities, prop_key is a Unicode string (Python 2) or str (Python 3). Before calculating the MD5 hash the Unicode must be encoded to a binary string (str in Python 2, bytes in Python 3). By default Python uses the ASCII encoder. However, if the Unicode string has non-ASCII characters then the encoder raises the exception. By changing the encoder from ASCII to another one that supports the non-ASCII character the problem is solved. UFT-8 supports every character there is so it's the preferred encoding format in 2020, although many legacy codecs are still in existence due to compatibility issues with old software, etc.