python source fileencoding

Some of the python source file starts with -*- coding: utf-8 -*-. This particular linetells python interpreter all the content (byte string) is utf-8 encoded. Lets see how it affects the code.

uni1.py:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
print("welcome")
print("animé")

output:

➜  code$ python2 uni1.py
   welcome
   animé

Third line had a accented character and it wasn’t explictly stated as unicode. print function passed successfully.Since first line instructed interpreter all the sequences from here on will follow utf-8, so it worked.

What if first line was missing ?

uni2.py

print("welcome")
print("animé")

output:

code$  python2 uni2.py
File "uni2.py", line 2
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xc3' in file uni2.py on line 2, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details

Now python complains that Non-ASCII character is found since default encoding is ASCII.More about source encoding can be found in PEP 263

Always set encoding in first or second line of python file.

See also

• Python Typing Koans
• Model Field - Django ORM Working - Part 2
• Structure - Django ORM Working - Part 1
• jut - render jupyter notebook in the terminal
• Five reasons to use Py.test