[Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)

[Paul Prescod]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Explain again why a directive is better than a specially marked
> comment, when your main goal seems to be to make it easy for
> non-parsing tools like editors to find it?
>...

Parsing tools do need it. The directive changes the file's semantics.
Both parsing and non-parsing tools need it.

I could live with a comment but I think that that is actually harder to
implement so I don't understand the benefit...I'm still trying to
understand what tools we are protecting. compiler.py can be easily
fixed. The real parser/compiler can be easily fixed. The other tools
mostly take their cue from one of these two modules, right?
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