how to ensure irb accepts emoji input instead of escaping it?

Question

I have two macs, from one I can merrily type all the emoji I please into irb, pry, and so forth and deal with them just like any other string.

From a newer Mac that may have a few less custom encoding configurations, I cannot do this, and I'm unsure as to why.

$ ruby -v
ruby 2.1.1p76 (2014-02-24 revision 45161) [x86_64-darwin14.0]

Here's an animated GIF of the issue:

irb escaping emoji as unicode bytes

And here's an animated GIF of irb working normally:

enter image description here

Any ideas on how to resolve this? I'm not an expert in Ruby's encoding settings (UTF, etc).

Do you have a gif of the one that works? I am very n00b, but is the string closing? — Jeff, Nov 22 '14 at 15:57
Which terminal or program are you using that creates the emoji popup? — Casper, Nov 22 '14 at 16:02
It's an OS X system-wide keyboard palete. It can be brought up anywhere in the operating system by pressing cmd-ctrl-space. — Justin Searls, Nov 22 '14 at 16:02
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/41228/why-do-emoji-like-%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD-appear-when-i-use-safari-but-not-chrome looked interesting. Also, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10958304/ruby-string-comparison-and-character-encoding-in-irb . What does 's.encoding' reveal? anything useful? Maybe this: Encoding.default_external ? — Jeff, Nov 22 '14 at 16:07
Jeff: that apple question doesn't seem relevant. Chrome's rendering engine has never supported emoji. — Justin Searls, Nov 22 '14 at 16:09
Jeff: both strings are encoded "UTF-8", as is `Encoding.default_external` — Justin Searls, Nov 22 '14 at 16:09
What happens if you do in shell `cat > emoji`, then type an emoji, hit enter + ctrl-d, then start irb, then `puts File.read('emoji')`? — Casper, Nov 22 '14 at 16:13
I think this could lead you to a solution: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10385944/cant-enter-umlauts-in-ruby-1-9-3-irb — Casper, Nov 22 '14 at 16:21
I.e. it could be a problem with the `readline` library compiled into your version of Ruby. — Casper, Nov 22 '14 at 16:22
Also this one: https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build/issues/185 — Casper, Nov 22 '14 at 16:27
One more: https://coderwall.com/p/wdm-_q/enable-unicode-support-in-irb — Casper, Nov 22 '14 at 16:31
yep casper you got it. submit an answer and i'll accept it. (this worked: `brew update; brew uninstall readline; brew install readline; rbenv install`) — Justin Searls, Nov 22 '14 at 16:38

Casper · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-22T17:22:06.097

Make sure Ruby is compiled with GNU Readline. When rvm compiles Ruby it automatically checks if Readline is installed, and if it is it will be included automatically.

You can check your Readline version in irb. Example:

ruby 2.1.3p242 (2014-09-19 revision 47630) [x86_64-linux]
irb(main):001:0> Readline::VERSION
=> "6.3"

So, copying your solution for installing the latest Readline with Homebrew, and then recompiling Ruby:

brew update; brew uninstall readline; brew install readline; rbenv install

how to ensure irb accepts emoji input instead of escaping it?

1 Answers1