How do I use GBP pound sterling symbol in Ruby on Rail's number to currency method?

I am quite new to Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

While following a Ruby guide to create a small food finding application, the author used the number to currency method from Ruby on Rails. The trouble is the default unit is $ but I would l开发者_StackOverflow中文版ike to change it to £.

When I did this in it gave me back the following error after I tried to run the code.

number_helper.rb:7 invalid multibyte char (US-ASCII) (SyntaxError)

Put the following in the first line of your file where you have £.

#coding: utf-8

By default, ruby can read one-byte characters, which are US-ASCII characters. The £ character does not fit within US-ASCII code, and the magic comment above let ruby read the file as UTF-8 code, which is becoming standard, and is capable of handeling multi-byte characters, including £ (Added following the suggestion by the Tin Man).

Edit With Ruby 2.0 to be published this month, the default encoding will be UTF-8, so you will not need to do this anymore.