building python with utf-8 default encoding?

[Robert Kern]

metaperl.etc at gmail.com wrote:
> I am playing around with OpenSwarm and was shocked to see that I cannot
> build Python with default encoding of utf-8 by passing a flag to
> configure... did I miss the option for doing so?

No. The default encoding (the return value of sys.getdefaultencoding()) should
alway be 'ascii'. Otherwise, programs written on one machine will not run on
other machines.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco