Pandas version checks

  • [X] I have checked that the issue still exists on the latest versions of the docs on main here

Location of the documentation

pandas.read_csv

Documentation problem

The default encoding is not mentioned for read_csv.

I tried finding it in the source code, and I'm not sure I followed it correctly, but it looks like it's ultimately specified in pandas.io.common.get_handle(): https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/blob/b7708f00c7b61990521e9a0e03680ed45b59086b/pandas/io/common.py#L697-L698

Defaulting to UTF-8 differs from open(), which could be surprising.

The default encoding is platform dependent (whatever locale.getencoding() returns)

(But that's not to say it's a bad thing. UTF-8 is a fine default.)

Suggested fix for documentation

Mention the default encoding, i.e. UTF-8. Or, if it's documented elsewhere, add a link.