Python, Emacs and Encoding

Question

I have trouble with Emacs+Python 2.7.1+Encoding. According to PEP 0263, Python uses the same declaration of source encoding as emacs does.

There is no problem when I start my Python source code script with the following encoding tag:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- mode=python; encoding:us-ascii -*-

But when I add a line ending mode to my encoding such as in:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- mode=python; encoding:us-ascii-unix -*-

Emacs still acepts my encoding information, but I get the following error from Python when executing my script:

File "./unicode.py", line 2
SyntaxError: encoding problem: with BOM

Is there a way to tell Emacs about the line ending I want to use and at the same time tell Python about the source file encoding?

Philipp · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-01 23:08:39Z

3

You can write two blocks: one that is parsed only by the interpreter, and one that is only parsed by Emacs:

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: us-ascii

print "Hello World"    

# Local Variables:
# mode: python
# coding: us-ascii-unix
# End:

Note that (1) us-ascii is the default in Python 2.x; and (2) Emacs is usually able to determine the line ending convention automatically; so you might be able to get along without declaring anything.

answered Mar 1, 2012 at 23:08

Philipp

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1 Comment

EPSG31468 Over a year ago

Thanks for your great answer. Some remarks for why I wanted this: I had some trouble in Python with non-ascii characters, so I forced Emacs to use only us-ascii-unix. Only this way I found out that Python has this cool feature of encoding definition too (and I had some has trouble to find out that Python cannot handle the -unix suffix).

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