[Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings

[Guido van Rossum]

> I strongly think we should restrict the directive to one per file and in
> fact I would say it should be one of the first two lines. It should be
> immediately following the shebang line if there is one. This is to allow
> text editors to detect it as they detect XML encoding declarations.

Hm, then the directive would syntactically have to *precede* the
docstring.  That currently doesn't work -- the docstring may only be
preceded by blank lines and comments.  Lots of tools for processing
docstrings already have this built into them.  Is it worth breaking
them so that editors can remain stupid?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)