[Tutor] help - SyntaxError: Non-UTF-8 code using python 3

[Dave Angel]

On 08/08/2012 11:26 PM, Lily Tran wrote:
> Hello;
>
>
> I am getting the following error when I try to run this python program in eclipse.  I am running python 3:
>
>
>  File "/Users/lilytran/Desktop/python/Ex_Files_Python_3_EssT/Exercise Files/class_beginner_python/hw3_2_lab6.py", line 30
>
> SyntaxError: Non-UTF-8 code starting with '\xd0' in file  on line 30, but no encoding declared; see http://python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/ for details
>
> ============================================================
>
>
> Can you please tell me what I am doing wrong and how do I fix this error?  Below is my program.  Thanks –Lily
>
> ====================================================
>
>
> import random
>
>
>
> def MagicEightBallEmulator():
>
> <SNIP>
>         what = random.choice(answers)
>
>     return print(what)
>
>
> def RunEmulator():
>
>     while True:
>
>         print ('Welcome to Magic 8 Ball!')
>
>         print ('Please ask your question!')
>
>         question = input()
>
>         if question == 'quit':
>
>             break
>
>         MagicEightBallEmulator()
>
>
>
> RunEmulator()
>
>

Sending us the source without adding a comment to line #30 seems a bit
presumptuous. Double spacing by sending it as a non-text message makes
it worse.

The error message itself seems pretty clear. You have a non-UTF8
sequence in a source file implicitly declared as being UTF8.

Simplest solution? Don't use non-ASCII characters. You are probably
entering some character (perhaps 0x000000D0) encoded in some other form,
and the compiler cannot decode it because it's not in UTF-8. How might
you have gotten an non-ASCII character? It might be on your keyboard,
like an o with an umlaut. Or you might have pasted it from a word
processing document or a pdf file, like a "smart quote."

Better solution? Use a text editor that understands encodings, and set
it to always use UTF-8.

Another solution? Figure out what encoding your editor is stuck in, and
declare that in your python file, as the second line.

Final solutions? Use a hex viewer to search the file for that D0
mentioned, and figure out just where in your source it is. There's no
reason to assume we could even see it here, since your message is
encoded in Windows-1252.

-- 

DaveA