From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2009-06-23T16:25:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Multibyte and Gems

On Jun 22, 2009, at 22:26, Martin Hess wrote:
> I've tracked down a problem with a Gem I am trying to use. It turns  
> out that it has some non-ascii characters in it; for example the  
> second quote in the regular expression below is not an ASCII  
> character:
>
>    parts = self.split( %r/( [:.;?!][ ] | (?:[ ]|^)["“] )/x )
>
> It produces errors like this:
>
> 	:in `require': /opt/local/lib/ruby1.9/gems/1.9.1/gems/webby-0.9.4/ 
> lib/webby/core_ext/string.rb:14: invalid multibyte char (US-ASCII)  
> (SyntaxError)
>
> I fixed it by adding the following to the top of the offending file:
>
> 	# encoding: utf-8
>
> My questions:
>
> * Is this the preferred fix?

Yes.

> * Is there a way to work around this problem without modifying the  
> Gem?

File a bug with the author and have them release a new version,  
otherwise no.

> * Is there an easy way to see if gems have non-ascii source files  
> but haven't included an encoding comment? Some kind of Ruby warning  
> for instance.

ruby -c will do this for you.