Python Source Code Encoding
Python 3's file source code encoding is UTF-8.
Make sure your editor save python files in UTF-8. (usually there's a preference setting.)
If you don't know what is Unicode, you should read Unicode Basics: Character Set, Encoding, UTF-8, Codepoint
Python 2 Unicode Characters in Source Code, UTF8 Declaration
For Python 2.x, the source code file encoding is assumed to be ASCII by default .
If your source code contains non-ASCII characters, you must declare the file's encoding in the first line or second line, Like this:
-*- coding: utf-8 -*-
, and you need to save the file in UTF-8 encoding.
This declaration is a convention adopted from the text editor Emacs . It tells any program reading the file that the file is encoded using a particular encoding.
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- # python 2 x = u"i ♥ cats" print x