Latest version of youtube-dl (2013.02.25) running on CentOS 5.x does not work

[DT-PI]

Hello. First time user.

OS version: CentOS 5.8
Python version: 2.6

1. Downloaded the bits using the provided instructions
2. sudo wget http://youtube-dl.org/downloads/2013.02.25/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
3. sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
4. /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl -h
   File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl", line 2
   SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xcc' in file /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl on line 3, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details

While I can go ahead and follow the given instructions ..., I am just curious as of what I have done wrong, as I was expecting things work right out-of-the-box.

Perhaps I am doing something trivial wrong.

Sorry, if thjis is something trivial that the 1st-time user should had known.
DT
DT

[phihag]

No, you didn't do anything wrong - that should work. What output do you get for

which python
python --version
/usr/bin/env python --version

?

[DT-PI]

Hi. Sorry for being off the radar ...
Thx for getting back to me.
To answer your questions: Since both python 2.4 & 2.6 have been installed on the system that I use (and /usr/bin/python is 2.4) I made the following chg in the youtube-dl, so it would use python2.6, i.e. the first line in the script is
#!/usr/bin/env /usr/bin/python2.6

Perhaps the above change is necessary but not sufficient, hence causing the error.
Let me know if I need to mk any other adjustments.

Thx
danesh

[yasoob]

@DT-PI did you use pythonbrew or what to install different versions of python ?

[broberts01]

Same issue here. I used
yum install python26
which placed python26 in /usr/bin
I tried changing the #!/usr/bin/env python to #!/usr/bin/env python26, but still the error remains.
Calling directly via
/usr/bin/python26 youtube-dl
resulted in the same error.
I also tried linking /usr/bin/python26 to ~/bin then modifying PATH to put ~/bin first. This results in which python returning /home/br/bin/python -- the 2.6 version. /usr/bin/env python --version returns Python 2.6.8
Is perhaps the issue with 2.6 on Centos5?

[broberts01]

Update -- recp'd and did a MD5 checksum. It seems something got corrupted when editing the first line. Explicitly calling
python26 youtube-dl
works fine, as does messing with the PATH and linking hack.

[phihag]

@DT-PI Based on the experiences of @broberts01, it looks like you may have accidentally changed the file somewhere. You can try redownloading and running

python2.6 /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

If that works, the error is in the editing. Make sure to use a hex editor and not a text one. Otherwise, simply comment and we'll reopen this issue.