windowspascalfreepascal

How to print emojis using Pascal on Windows cmd/powershell

According to this table the UTF8 code for the smiley emoji is: F0 9F 98 81.

I attempt to write this output to the console, to no avail:

Program emojii;

{$apptype CONSOLE}

Begin
  WriteLn(#$F0#$9F#$98#$81);
End.

The response I get is jargon: 😁

I'm using Windows Terminal Powershell that supports emojiis, as can be seen in the image below:

Windows Terminal Powershell with emojii support

I'm using FreePascal: Free Pascal Compiler version 3.2.2 [2024/02/26] for x86_64. I build with the following command:

fpc emojii.pas
Solution

  • By default Windows CMD and Powershell use code page 437, which doesn't support emojis.

    The solution is to use SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8) to change the consoles code page to UTF8.

    I've included an example below using both UTF8 and UTF16 codepoints.

    Program Emoji;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

uses
  Windows;
  
Var
  U8Emoji: String;
  U16Emoji: WideString;
  Converted: String;
Begin
  // 😁 emoji UTF8 and UTF16 codepoints
  U8Emoji := Char($F0) + Char($9F) + Char($98) + Char($81);
  U16Emoji := WideChar($D83D) + WideChar($DE01);
  
  // Convert UTF16 to UTF8
  Converted := UTF8Encode(U16Emoji);

  // Set the Windows console codepage to UTF8. By default CMD and Powershell
  // use code page 437: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
  SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8);  

  // Prints 😁 emoji 
  WriteLn(U8Emoji);
  WriteLn(Converted);
End.

    You will need a font that supports emojis. Windows 11 uses the Segoe UI Emoji font by default.