In Python 3, the default encoding of source files is utf-8. The encoding cookie is now unnecessary and redundant so remove it. For more details, see the docs: https://docs.python.org/3/howto/unicode.html#the-string-type > The default encoding for Python source code is UTF-8, so you can > simply include a Unicode character in a string literal ... Includes a fix for the flake8 header checks to stop expecting an encoding cookie.
In Python 3, both .encode() and .decode() default the encoding to 'utf-8'. See the docs: https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.encode https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#bytes.decode Simplify and shorten the code by using the default instead of respecifying it.
Code should not arbitrarily mix bytes & str values. The values should be understood and deliberate. When Python is run with the -b option, this change fixes warnings of the form: BytesWarning: str() on a bytes instance