How to print unicode charaters in Command Prompt with Ruby

Question

I was wondering how to print unicode characters, such as Japanese or fun characters like 📦.

I can print hearts with:

hearts = "\u2665"
puts hearts.encode('utf-8')

How can I print more unicode charaters with Ruby in Command Prompt?
My method works with some characters but not all.

Code examples would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to enclose the unicode character in { and } if the number of hex digits isn't 4 (credit : /u/Stefan) e.g.:

heart = "\u2665"
package = "\u{1F4E6}"
fire_and_one_hundred = "\u{1F525 1F4AF}"
puts heart
puts package
puts fire_and_one_hundred

Alternatively you could also just put the unicode character directly in your source, which is quite easy at least on macOS with the Emoji & Symbols menu accessed by Ctrl + Command + Space by default (a similar menu can be accessed on Windows 10 by Win + ; ) in most applications including your text editor/Ruby IDE most likely:

heart = "♥"
package = "📦"
fire_and_one_hundred = "🔥💯"
puts heart
puts package
puts fire_and_one_hundred

Output:

♥
📦
🔥💯

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How it looks in the macOS terminal: