Python 2.7.3 Non-ASCII character '\xb3'

[fkumro]

Running youtube-dl results in python error

Python 2.7.3 (default, Apr 24 2012, 00:00:54) 
[GCC 4.7.0 20120414 (prerelease)] on linux2

File "youtube-dl", line 2
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xb3' in file youtube-dl on line 3, but no encoding declared; see 
http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details

[FiloSottile]

Uh-oh. Did you compile python by yourself?

[fkumro]

Nope, default 2.x install on Arch Linux

[FiloSottile]

could you try

mv youtube-dl youtube-dl.zip
unzip youtube-dl.zip
python -m youtube_dl

[fkumro]

$ unzip youtube-dl.zip 
Archive:  youtube-dl.zip
warning [youtube-dl.zip]:  19 extra bytes at beginning or within zipfile
  (attempting to process anyway)
  inflating: FileDownloader.py       
  inflating: InfoExtractors.py       
  inflating: PostProcessor.py        
  inflating: __init__.py             
  inflating: __main__.py             
  inflating: utils.py                

$ python2 -m youtube_dl 
Usage: __main__.py [options] url [url...]

__main__.py: error: you must provide at least one URL

[FiloSottile]

Uh-oh. Will try to reproduce, could you post Arch version, Python package version, python2 --version etc? (In the meantime you can use python2 -m youtube_dl as ./youtube-dl)

[fkumro]

Arch is a rolling release so there is not major version I could give you, updated as of a few days ago.

$ python2 --version
Python 2.7.3

[SheikYerbouti]

The file "youtube-dl" used to be a simple text file which worked well with with my Python 2.5.1 installation in Slitaz 3.0. Now it's a zipped up collection of six files that I can't get to work at all. Here's how the beginning of one of the earlier releases looked like ...

#!/usr/bin/env python

Edit by @phihag: snip

[phihag]

@SheikYerbouti Your issue is unrelated; you're using the unsupported Python 2.5. But don't worry, you should still by able to run youtube-dl [as described by @fkumro](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/462#issuecomment-9237601]. Alternatively, run these commands (requires git):

git clone git://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl.git youtube-dl.git
# Alternative to git: unpack the zip file with unzip
echo -e '#!/bin/sh\nPYTHONPATH="$(dirname $(readlink -f $0))/youtube-dl.git" exec python -m youtube_dl "$@"' > youtube-dl
chmod a+x youtube-dl
./youtube-dl

Alternatively, simply update cPython to 2.7. Note that cPython 2.5 has reached its end of life and will not even get security updated.

[SheikYerbouti]

Thanks for your reply, Philipp. Unfortunately I still have problems
with youtube-dl.

When I run the latest version of youtube-dl (2012.10.09) directly I
get this error:

tux@slitaz:~$ youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyPnNsY_0Pc
File "/usr/bin/youtube-dl", line 2
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xb3' in file /usr/bin/youtube-dl on
line 3, but no encoding declared; see
http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details

... and when I run it as you have recommended via the script I get this error:

tux@slitaz:~$ ./youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyPnNsY_0Pc
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/runpy.py", line 87, in run_module
raise ImportError("No module named " + mod_name)
ImportError: No module named youtube_dl

I think the time has come for me to upgrade to Slitaz 4.0, for which
there's a more recent version of Python. I'm sure I will get it to
work then.

Thanks again,
Wolfgang

On 10/10/2012, Philipp Hagemeister notifications@github.com wrote:

@SheikYerbouti Your issue is unrelated; you're using the unsupported Python
2.5. But don't worry, you should still by able to run youtube-dl [as
described by
@fkumro](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/462#issuecomment-9237601].
Alternatively, run these commands (requires git):

git clone git://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl.git youtube-dl.git
# Alternative to git: unpack the zip file with unzip
echo -e '#!/bin/sh\nPYTHONPATH="$(dirname $(readlink -f

$0))/youtube-dl.git" sh -c 'echo $PYTHONPATH'exec python -m youtube_dl "$@"'

youtube-dl
chmod a+x youtube-dl

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#462 (comment)

[phihag]

Umm, did you paste exactly what I wrote into your shell? Most likely, your checkout is called differently and you simply need to adapt $PYTHONPATH in the youtube-dl wrapper script. Can you edit youtube-dl to include

ls -l "$(dirname $(readlink -f $0))"
ls -l "$(dirname $(readlink -f $0))/youtube-dl.git"
echo "$PYTHONPATH"

and post the results when you execute the modified script?

[phihag]

Closing because of no reply and because I strongly suspect that it should work given the instructions. Feel free to comment or open a new issue if the proposed changes don't solve your problem.

[yetty]

I had the same problem (in Arch, too) and it helped install youtube_dl by hand (pip install youtube_dl). After it, all works fine.

[phihag]

@yetty This issue shouldn't occur anymore; we've switched to a different system. How exactly did you install youtube-dl? pacman -S youtube-dl worked fine for me.

[yetty]

I installed it the same way. I don't know, where's problem. When I uninstalled everything and tried to install it again, I had the same troubles.

[ramonmaruko]

I experience this problem because my /usr/bin/python was symlinked to /usr/bin/python2. Changed it back to the default (/usr/bin/python3) and it is now working again.