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= Non-ASCII Characters =

You should avoid as much as possible putting non-ASCII characters in a source file. If you're using Emacs, you can use the following function to find non-ASCII characters. It is taken from the [[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/FindingNonAsciiCharacters | Emacs wiki]]:

{{{
;; Find non-ASCII characters in source files.
(defun non-ascii-char ()
  "Find the first non-ASCII character from point onwards."
  (interactive)
  (let (point)
    (save-excursion
      (setq point
            (catch 'non-ascii
              (while (not (eobp))
                (or (eq (char-charset (following-char))
                        'ascii)
                    (throw 'non-ascii (point)))
                (forward-char 1)))))
    (if point
        (goto-char point)
        (message "No non-ASCII characters."))))
}}}

Put the above function definition in your Emacs configuration file `~/.emacs`. Then to use the function in an opened source file, do:

{{{
M-x non-ascii-char RET
}}}

There are situations where you need to use non-ASCII characters in source files. For example, you might want to acknowledge someone for their contribution or you want to put an author's name in a source file. The name might contain non-ASCII characters. In that case, put the following line at the top of the relevant source file:

{{{
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
}}}

Another case would be in doctesting functions that are meant to support unicode input, for example, in the notebook.

To use non-ASCII characters in `.rst` files, put the following at the very top of your `.rst` file:

{{{
.. -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
}}}