Ruby warning message

Question

When I run rdoc in terminal, it works, but only with a heap of warnings saying that:

unable to convert "\xA9" from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 for tmp/cache/assets/CC7/4D0/sprockets%2Fd7d58761510113ba5435f0baba05573b, skipping

I get a similar message when installing the telephony engine freeSWITCH.

What does it mean, should I be worried, and how can I fix it?

Adam Sanderson · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-16 17:59:08Z

1

No, you shouldn't be too worried. At worst, some of rdoc's generated documentation will not show up, but most people just go and read the docs on the web anyways.

If you run into this in your own application code however, I would suggest reading Yehuda Katz's article on Ruby 1.9's String Encoding.

Read it twice... there's a lot in there.

answered May 16, 2013 at 17:59

Adam Sanderson

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zeantsoi · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-16 17:46:20Z

1

Assuming you're in a Unix based environment, adding export LC_CTYPE="utf-8" to your ~/.bash_profile should resolve things.

Otherwise, you may want to try the following combination:

export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
unset LC_ALL

EDIT:

The error messages indicate that the environment is configured to read ASCII, but the code being run is using UTF-8 encoding.

edited May 16, 2013 at 17:46

answered May 16, 2013 at 16:38

zeantsoi

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6 Comments

Starkers Over a year ago

Thanks, but what does it mean?

Patrick Oscity Over a year ago

It sets your default character encoding to UTF-8. The error message means that the code that runs is trying to use UTF-8 characters, but is in ASCII encoding mode and cannot read those UTF-8 characters. No need to worry, it won't break anything.

zeantsoi Over a year ago

@JWH, padde is correct. The problem is mostly innocuous, but in some circumstances, it can cause fatal errors in certain Ruby gems. Did modifying your .bash_profile resolve the issue?

Starkers Over a year ago

@zeantsoi Sadly not! I've asked a similar question on the unix and linux stackexchange, but all suggestions welcome!

zeantsoi Over a year ago

@JWH, did you try restarting your machine?

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