My Python error...

[Erik Max Francis]

SaMTHG at googlemail.com wrote:

> Basically I have Mac OS X 10.4.11 and I've  got python 2.5.
> When I go to TextEdit and type in something like
> #!/usr/bin/env python
> print 2+2
> and save it as simplescript.py.
> Then I go to terminal and cd my way to the dir that the script source
> is in and type:
> python simplescript.py
> And the output is:
> File "simplescript.py", line 1
> SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xfe' in file simplescript.py on
> line 1, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html
> for details
> What does this mean? And how do I make it work again?

It probably means that your text editor is saving as UTF-16 and it's 
seeing part of a byte order marker (0xFE 0xFF or 0xFF 0xFE depending on 
endianness) -- either that or you've accidentally injected some extra 
garbage into the file.  Save as ASCII instead.

-- 
Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
  San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
   Heaven ne'er helps the man who will not act.
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