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Python Python Basics (Retired) Shopping List Lists and Strings

Bjarke Mønsted
Bjarke Mønsted
3,317 Points
Posted by Bjarke Mønsted
Bjarke Mønsted
3,317 Points

Using international chars in a variable?

I used my middlename "Mønsted" in this challenge, and it kept coming up with error, until I changed it to "Monsted" instead. Is this normal behavior or should I do some additional formatting?

greeting_list.py 
full_name = 'Bjarke Monsted Laursen'
name_list = full_name.split(' ')

1 Answer

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points

Wow! That's unfortunate. The challenge checker clearly isn't using utf-8. I've tried your example with various character encoding declarations found in PEP 263, but none seemed to convince the checker to accept your ø.

Python 3 default encoding is utf-8:

$ python3
Python 3.4.0 (default, Apr 11 2014, 13:05:11) 
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> print(sys.getdefaultencoding())
utf-8

Though Python 2 default encoding is ascii:

$ python2
Python 2.7.6 (default, Mar 22 2014, 22:59:56) 
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> print(sys.getdefaultencoding())
ascii

Tagging Kenneth Love for comment