Working with UTF-8 encoding in Python source
PythonEncodingUtf 8Character EncodingPython Problem Overview
Consider:
$ cat bla.py
u = unicode('d…')
s = u.encode('utf-8')
print s
$ python bla.py
File "bla.py", line 1
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe2' in file bla.py on line 1, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details
How can I declare UTF-8 strings in source code?
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
In Python 3, UTF-8 is the default source encoding (see PEP 3120), so unicode characters can be used anywhere.
In Python 2, you can declare in the source code header:
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
....
It is described in the PEP 0263:
Then you can use UTF-8 in strings:
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
u = 'idzie wąż wąską dróżką'
uu = u.decode('utf8')
s = uu.encode('cp1250')
print(s)
In addition, it may be worth verifying that your text editor properly encodes your code in UTF-8. Otherwise, you may have invisible characters that are not interpreted as UTF-8.
Solution 2 - Python
Do not forget to verify if your text editor encodes properly your code in UTF-8.
Otherwise, you may have invisible characters that are not interpreted as UTF-8.