Question

I have a python (2.5.4) script which I run in cygwin (in a DOS box on Windows XP). I want to include a pound sign (£) in the output. If I do so, I get this error:

SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xa3' in file dbscan.py on line 253, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details 

OK. So I looked at that PEP, and now tried adding this to the beginning of my script:

# coding=cp437 

That stopped the error, but the output shows ú where it should show £.

I’ve tried ISO-8859-1 as well, with the same result.

Does anyone know which encoding I need?

Or where I could look to find out?

Answer 1

There are two encodings involved here:

• The encoding of your source code, which must be correct in order for your input file to mean what you think it means
• The encoding of the output, which must be correct in order for the symbols emitted to display as expected.

It seems your output encoding is off now. If this is running in a terminal window in Cygwin, it is that terminal’s encoding that you need to match.

EDIT: I just ran the following Python program in a (native) Windows XP terminal window, thought it was slightly interesting:

>>> ord('£') 156 

156 is certainly not the codepoint for the pound sign in the Latin1 encoding you tried. It doesn’t seem to be in Window’s Codepage 1252 either, which I would expect my terminal to use … Weird.