invalid multibyte char (US-ASCII) with Rails and Ruby 1.9

198
votes

I'm using Ruby 1.9.1 with Rails 2.3.4 My application is to handle text input

If I try something like (the inside quotation marks look different)

text = "”“"

I get the following error:

#<SyntaxError: /Users/tammam56/rubydev/favquote/lib/daemons/twitter_quotes_fetch.rb:54: invalid multibyte char (US-ASCII)
/Users/tammam56/rubydev/favquote/lib/daemons/twitter_quotes_fetch.rb:54: invalid multibyte char (US-ASCII)
/Users/tammam56/rubydev/favquote/lib/daemons/twitter_quotes_fetch.rb:54: syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting keyword_end

I need to user those quotation marks as users might input them and I have to account for that?

Any ideas?

6
ruby-on-railsruby-1.9
If your code does not have any backticks in it but you're being "accused" of using backticks, there may be some weird spacing/tabs/newline issues in your file. Try posting it into a StackOverflow blank for example, and SO will start acting weird. Remove the strange spaces and tabs and newlines. Again, just pasting the code into a SO blank and trying to format your code for presentation is one way to give yourself a hint. – boulder_ruby

6 Answers

690
votes

Have you tried adding a magic comment in the script where you use non-ASCII chars? It should go on top of the script.

#!/bin/env ruby
# encoding: utf-8

It worked for me like a charm.

42
votes

If you want to add magic comments on all the source files of a project easily, you can use the magic_encoding gem

sudo gem install magic_encoding

then just call magic_encoding in the terminal from the root of your app.

17
votes

I just want to add my solution:

I use german umlauts like ö, ü, ä and got the same error.
@Jarek Zmudzinski just told you how it works, but here is mine:

Add this code to the top of your Controller: # encoding: UTF-8
(for example to use flash message with umlauts)

example of my Controller:

# encoding: UTF-8
class UserController < ApplicationController

Now you can use ö, ä ,ü, ß, "", etc.

10
votes

That worked for me:

$ export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
$ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
8
votes

Those slanted double quotes are not ASCII characters. The error message is misleading about them being 'multi-byte'.

8
votes

Just a note that as of Ruby 2.0 there is no need to add # encoding: utf-8. UTF-8 is automatically detected.