code: def handle_decode_replace(e):
      
      count = e.end - e.start
      #return "." * count, e.end
  
      global ENCODING_REPLACE_CHAR
      return ENCODING_REPLACE_CHAR * count, e.end
docs: this handles replacing bad characters when printing out
  
      http://www.programcreek.com/python/example/3643/codecs.register_error
      http://bioportal.weizmann.ac.il/course/python/PyMOTW/PyMOTW/docs/codecs/index.html
      https://pymotw.com/2/codecs/