Declaring encoding in Python [duplicate]

Answer 1

Put:

# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-

as the first line of the file (or second line if using *nix) and save the file as UTF-8.

If you're using Python 2, use Unicode string literals (u"..."), for example:

means = u"a ، b ، c"
lst = means.split(u"،")

If you're using Python 3, string literals are Unicode already (unless marked as bytestrings b"...").

Answer 2

You need to declare an encoding for your file, as documented here and here.