Python "SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe2' in file" [duplicate]

python

I am writing some python code and I am receiving the error message as in the title, from searching this has to do with the character set.

Here is the line that causes the error

hc = HealthCheck("instance_health", interval=15, target808="HTTP:8080/index.html")

I cannot figure out what character is not in the ANSI ASCII set? Furthermore searching "\xe2" does not give anymore information as to what character that appears as. Which character in that line is causing the issue?

I have also seen a few fixes for this issue but I am not sure which to use. Could someone clarify what the issue is (python doesn't interpret unicode unless told to do so?), and how I would clear it up properly?

EDIT: Here are all the lines near the one that errors

def createLoadBalancer():
    conn = ELBConnection(creds.awsAccessKey, creds.awsSecretKey)
    hc = HealthCheck("instance_health", interval=15, target808="HTTP:8080/index.html")
    lb = conn.create_load_balancer('my_lb', ['us-east-1a', 'us-east-1b'],[(80, 8080, 'http'), (443, 8443, 'tcp')])
    lb.configure_health_check(hc)
    return lb

Solution 1:

If you are just trying to use UTF-8 characters or don't care if they are in your code, add this line to the top of your .py file

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

Solution 2:

You've got a stray byte floating around. You can find it by running

with open("x.py") as fp:
    for i, line in enumerate(fp):
        if "\xe2" in line:
            print i, repr(line)

where you should replace "x.py" by the name of your program. You'll see the line number and the offending line(s). For example, after inserting that byte arbitrarily, I got:

4 "\xe2        lb = conn.create_load_balancer('my_lb', ['us-east-1a', 'us-east-1b'],[(80, 8080, 'http'), (443, 8443, 'tcp')])\n"

Solution 3:

Or you could just simply use:

# coding: utf-8

at top of .py file

Solution 4:

\xe2 is the '-' character, it appears in some copy and paste it uses a different equal looking '-' that causes encoding errors. Replace the '-'(from copy paste) with the correct '-' (from you keyboard button).

Solution 5:

Change the file character encoding,

put below line to top of your code always

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-