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Source Code Encoding

By default, Python source files are treated as encoded in UTF-8. In that encoding, characters of most languages in the world can be used simultaneously in string literals, identifiers and comments — although the standard library only uses ASCII characters for identifiers, a convention that any portable code should follow. To display all these characters properly, your editor must recognize that the file is UTF-8, and it must use a font that supports all the characters in the file.

To declare an encoding other than the default one, a special comment line should be added as the first line of the file. The syntax is as follows:

 # -*- coding: encoding -*-

where encoding is one of the valid codecs supported by Python.

For example, to declare that Windows-1252 encoding is to be used, the first line of your source code file should be:

 # -*- coding: cp-1252 -*-

One exception to the first line rule is when the source code starts with a UNIX “shebang” line . In this case, the encoding declaration should be added as the second line of the file. For example:

 #!/usr/bin/env python3 
 # -*- coding: cp-1252 -*-