Python code in USS on z/OS Mainframe - Square brackets not recognized

Question

I am trying to execute the below python code on z/OS Mainframe USS. The problem I'm facing is that when I run the code, I get the below error message. It appears the square brackets are not recognized in my code.

  File "/u/q123/python/pyfilr.py", line 11
    print(lineï..0:4ï..)                   
              ¬                            
SyntaxError: invalid syntax 

Below is my code:

#!/usr/local/bin/rocket/python/python27                                 
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-                                                 
import os                                                               
import json                                                             
def main():                                                             
    curpath = os.path.abspath(os.curdir)                                                      
    inp_file_path = os.path.join(curpath, os.path.join("python","inp.txt")
    file1 = open(inp_file_path,"r") 
    line = file1.readline().strip() 
    while line!="":
        print(line[0:4])
        jsonstr = json.dumps(line)
        line = file1.readline().strip()
        print(jsonstr)
    file1.close()
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()   

If my remove the 2nd line "# -- coding: utf-8 -- " in my code then it errors out for below error message.

SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xdd' in file /u/q123/python/pyfilr.py on line 11, but no encoding declared; see http://python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/ for details

I am not sure how to fix the error. I am using python 2.7.

Can you suggest a solution to this problem so that I can use square brackets in my code?.

Answer 1

Ascii is very deeply built into Python, which is an issue on z/OS, which natively supports EBCDIC. You can use the chtag command to tell z/OS to treat a file as a specific encoding. To see if the file is tagged already, you can issue the command

ls -T <filename>

To tag the file, you can issue the command

chtag -tvc UTF-8 <filename>

I would suggest deleting the file, touching an empty file, tagging it, and then putting content in it, instead of just tagging the file.

Answer 2

Since you are using python 2.7 the python script should be an ASCII file and your session should enable auto conversion. Here is what will work:

export _BPXK_AUTOCVT=ON
export _CEE_RUNOPTS="FILETAG(AUTOCVT,AUTOTAG) POSIX(ON)"
iconv -f ibm-1047 -t utf-8 pyfilr.py >pyfilrA.py
chtag -t -c utf-8 pyfilrA.py
python pyfilrA.py

Also add a missing closing parenthesis on line 7 of your script.