Compiler directives in the source

[Skip Montanaro]

    Paul> Python could accept
  
    Paul>   %encoding: -*- utf8 -*-
    ...
    Paul> and then both Python and Emacs could understand it.

Yes, but code containing such a cookie wouldn't run on older versions of
Python.  Sticking the encoding information in a magic comment is a hack,
everyone knows that, but as has been repeated several times, there are some
editors which understand the cookie (it has to be comment-agnostic because
such cookies might be used for many types of files), and embedding it in a
comment keeps it from breaking old versions of Python.

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