Marc-Andre Lemburg <mal@lemburg.com>:

malemburg · malemburg · commit 90e81471181e · 2000-06-07T09:13:21.000Z
Change the default encoding to 'ascii' (it was previously
defined as UTF-8).

Note: The implementation still uses UTF-8 to implement
the buffer protocol, so C APIs will still see UTF-8. This
is on purpose: rather than fixing the Unicode implementation,
the C APIs should be made Unicode aware.
diff --git a/Objects/unicodeobject.c b/Objects/unicodeobject.c
@@ -4710,7 +4710,7 @@ void _PyUnicode_Init()
 
     /* Init the implementation */
     unicode_empty = _PyUnicode_New(0);
-    strcpy(unicode_default_encoding, "utf-8");
+    strcpy(unicode_default_encoding, "ascii");
 }
 
 /* Finalize the Unicode implementation */

Original file line number	Diff line number	Diff line change
`@@ -4710,7 +4710,7 @@ void _PyUnicode_Init()`
`4710`	`4710`
`4711`	`4711`	`/* Init the implementation */`
`4712`	`4712`	`unicode_empty = _PyUnicode_New(0);`
`4713`		`- strcpy(unicode_default_encoding, "utf-8");`
	`4713`	`+ strcpy(unicode_default_encoding, "ascii");`
`4714`	`4714`	`}`
`4715`	`4715`
`4716`	`4716`	`/* Finalize the Unicode implementation */`