Should I use encoding declaration in Python 3?

by

Because the default is UTF-8, you only need to use that declaration when you deviate from the default, or if you rely on other tools (like your IDE or text editor) to make use of that information.

In other words, as far as Python is concerned, only when you want to use an encoding that differs do you have to use that declaration.

Other tools, such as your editor, can support similar syntax, which is why the PEP 263 specification allows for considerable flexibility in the syntax (it must be a comment, the text coding must be there, followed by either a : or = character and optional whitespace, followed by a recognised codec).

Note that it only applies to how Python reads the source code. It doesn’t apply to executing that code, so not to how printing, opening files, or any other I/O operations translate between bytes and Unicode. For more details on Python, Unicode, and encodings, I strongly urge you to read the Python Unicode HOWTO, or the very thorough Pragmatic Unicode talk by Ned Batchelder.

More Related Contents:

  1. Why doesn’t Python recognize my utf-8 encoded source file?
  2. Changing the “locale preferred encoding” in Python 3 in Windows
  3. Python 3 CSV file giving UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte error when I print
  4. Changing default encoding of Python?
  5. Why should we NOT use sys.setdefaultencoding(“utf-8”) in a py script?
  6. Url decode UTF-8 in Python
  7. error UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte
  8. How to convert a file to utf-8 in Python?
  9. Let JSON object accept bytes or let urlopen output strings
  10. Dangers of sys.setdefaultencoding(‘utf-8’)
  11. How do I check if a string is unicode or ascii?
  12. printing UTF-8 in Python 3 using Sublime Text 3
  13. How to print UTF-8 encoded text to the console in Python < 3?
  14. How to write UTF-8 in a CSV file
  15. Why declare unicode by string in python?
  16. ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xa0 in position 4276: invalid start byte
  17. Python 3: How to specify stdin encoding
  18. Python ascii utf unicode
  19. ElementTree and unicode
  20. python 3 open() default encoding
  21. UnicodeDecodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xc3 in position 23: ordinal not in range(128)
  22. Why does this Python program send empty emails when I encode it with utf-8? [duplicate]
  23. What encoding does open() use by default?
  24. Switching to Python 3 causing UnicodeDecodeError
  25. Convert “\x” escaped string into readable string in python
  26. python encoding utf-8
  27. UnicodeDecodeError in Python when reading a file, how to ignore the error and jump to the next line?
  28. Python – dealing with mixed-encoding files
  29. UnicodeDecodeError when performing os.walk
  30. Python CGI – UTF-8 doesn’t work

Leave a Comment