Python SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe2' in file

Question

I have just switched from using running a Django App under Python 3 to Using Python 2.7. I now get this error:

SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe2' in file /Users/user/Documents/workspace/testpro/testpro/apps/common/models/vendor.py on line 9, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details

The code its referring to is just a comment:

class Vendor(BaseModel):
    """
    A company manages owns one of more stores.‎
    """
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)


    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

Why?

This works:

 class Vendor(BaseModel):
        """

        """
        name = models.CharField(max_length=255)


        def __unicode__(self):
            return self.name

You don't have any comments in your posted code. You have a *docstring*. — Martijn Pieters, Jun 09 '14 at 10:50
Please show the *actual* code that produces that error. The error refers to your source code containing a non-ASCII character, which isn't the case for the snippet of code you posted. — Lukas Graf, Jun 09 '14 at 10:50
@LukasGraf: I am trying to locate a codec that might use some kind of non-breaking space at position E2, but I haven't found one yet. — Martijn Pieters, Jun 09 '14 at 10:51
@LukasGraf: There is a `\xe2\x80\x8e` sequence in the posted code. — Martijn Pieters, Jun 09 '14 at 10:52

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-25T08:52:06.830

You have a UTF-8 encoded U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK in your docstring:

'\n    A company manages owns one of more stores.\xe2\x80\x8e\n    '

Either remove that codepoint (and try to use a code editor, not a word processor) from your code, or just put the PEP-263 encoding comment at the top of the file:

# encoding=utf8

Python 3 uses UTF-8 by default, Python 2 defaults to ASCII for source code unless you add that comment.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 25 '18 at 08:00

As already pointed out by Martijn Pieters, your docstring contains a UTF-8 (i.e. non-ASCII) character.

I'd like to elaborate a bit, on the proper way to declare file encoding. As it is stated in PEP 263:

To define a source code encoding, a magic comment must be placed into the source files either as first or second line in the file, such as:
# coding=<encoding name>
or (using formats recognized by popular editors):
#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: <encoding name> -*-
or:
#!/usr/bin/python
# vim: set fileencoding=<encoding name> : 
More precisely, the first or second line must match the following regular expression:
^[ \t\f]*#.*?coding[:=][ \t]*([-_.a-zA-Z0-9]+)

What that means (as it brightly summed up in an answer to another question):

So, you can put pretty much anything before the "coding" part, but stick to "coding" (with no prefix) if you want to be 100% python-docs-recommendation-compatible.

So, for the case, suggested 'magic comments', would be:

# coding=utf8

or:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf8 -*-

or:

#!/usr/bin/python
# vim: set fileencoding=utf8 :

Python SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe2' in file

2 Answers2