python - SyntaxError: Non-UTF-8 code starting with '\x91'

Question

I am trying to write a binary search program for a class, and I am pretty sure that my logic is right, but I keep getting a non-UTF-8 error. I have never seen this error and any help/clarification would be great! Thanks a bunch.

Here's the code.

def main():


    str names = [‘Ava Fischer’, ‘Bob White’, ‘Chris Rich’, ‘Danielle Porter’, ‘Gordon Pike’, ‘Hannah Beauregard’, ‘Matt Hoyle’, ‘Ross Harrison’, ‘Sasha Ricci’, ‘Xavier Adams’]

    binarySearch(names, input(str("Please Enter a Name.")))

    print("That name is at position "+position)


def binarySearch(array, searchedValue):

    begin = 0 
    end = len(array) - 1 
    position = -1 
    found = False

    while !=found & begin<=end:
        middle=(begin+end)/2

        if array[middle]== searchedValue:
            found=True 
            position = middle
        elif array[middle] >value:
            end=middle-1
        else:
            first =middle+1
return position

There are many syntax errors in the posted code. str names with a space is not valid Python, the single quotes are not valid ASCII single quotes, Python uses and, not & for boolean logic, etc. — Martijn Pieters♦
Is this your actual code, or did you attempt to re-write pseudo-code to describe the problem? — g.d.d.c
@g.d.d.c: well, seeing as I can reproduce the error by encoding the OP sample to CP1252 then running it with Python 3, we can assume this is the actual code. — Martijn Pieters♦

Martijn Pieters Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-15T19:12:45

Your editor replaced ' (ASCII 39) with U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK characters, usually a sign you used Word or a similar wordprocessor instead of a plain text editor; a word processor tries to make your text 'prettier' and auto-replaces things like simple quotes with fancy ones. This was then saved in the Windows 1252 codepage encoding, where the fancy quotes were saved as hex 91 characters.

Python is having none of it. It wants source code saved in UTF-8 and using ' or " for quotation marks. Use notepad, or better still, IDLE to edit your Python code instead.

You have numerous other errors in your code; you cannot use spaces in your variable names, for example, and Python uses and, not & as the boolean AND operator. != is an operator requiring 2 operands (it means 'not equal', the opposite of ==), the boolean NOT operator is called not.

python - SyntaxError: Non-UTF-8 code starting with '\x91'

4 Answers