File contains non-ASCII character

Reports cases in Python 2 when a file contains non-ASCII characters and does not have an encoding declaration at the top.

Example:

class A(object):
# №5
    def __init__(self):
        pass

In this example, the IDE reports a non-ASCII symbol in a comment and a lack of encoding declaration. Apply the proposed quick-fix to add a missing encoding declaration:

# coding=utf-8
class A(object)
# №5
    def __init__(self):
        pass

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

PyNonAsciiChar

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Python

Inspection ID: PyNonAsciiCharInspection

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the File contains non-ASCII character inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Select default encoding

Option ID:

myDefaultEncoding

Default value:

utf-8

Other available settings:

ascii
big5
big5hkscs
cp037
cp424
cp437
cp500
cp720
cp737
cp775
cp850
cp852
cp855
cp856
cp857
cp858
cp860
cp861
cp862
cp863
cp864
cp865
cp866
cp869
cp874
cp875
cp932
cp949
cp950
cp1006
cp1026
cp1140
cp1250
cp1251
cp1252
cp1253
cp1254
cp1255
cp1256
cp1257
cp1258
euc-jp
euc-jis-2004
euc-kr
gb2312
gbk
gb18030
hz
iso2022-jp
iso2022-jp-1
iso2022-jp-2
iso2022-jp-2004
iso2022-jp-3
iso2022-jp-ext
iso2022-kr
latin-1
iso8859-2
iso8859-3
iso8859-4
iso8859-5
iso8859-6
iso8859-7
iso8859-8
iso8859-9
iso8859-10
iso8859-13
iso8859-14
iso8859-15
iso8859-16
johab
koi8-r
koi8-u
mac-cyrillic
mac-greek
mac-iceland
mac-latin2
mac-roman
mac-turkish
ptcp154
shift-jis
shift-jis-2004
shift-jisx0213
utf-32
utf-32-be
utf-32-le
utf-16
utf-16-be
utf-16-le
utf-7
utf-8-sig

Encoding comment format

Option ID:

myEncodingFormatIndex

Default value:

# coding=<encoding name>

Other available settings:

# -*- coding: <encoding name> -*-
# vim: set fileencoding=<encoding name>

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection PyNonAsciiChar

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	CLion 2025.2, DataSpell 2025.2, IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, PyCharm 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025