How do I remove emoji from string
Karol S already provided a solution, but the reason might not be clear:
"\u1F600" is actually "\u1F60" followed by "0":
"\u1F60" # => "α½ ""\u1F600" # => "α½ 0"You have to use curly braces for code points above FFFF:
"\u{1F600}" #=> "π"Therefore the character class [\u1F600-\u1F6FF] is interpreted as [\u1F60 0-\u1F6F F], i.e. itmatches "\u1F60", the range "0".."\u1F6F" and "F".
Using curly braces solves the issue:
/[\u{1F600}-\u{1F6FF}]/This matches (emoji) characters in these unicode blocks:
- U+1F600..U+1F64F Emoticons
- U+1F650..U+1F67F Ornamental Dingbats
- U+1F680..U+1F6FF Transport and Map Symbols
You can also use unpack, pack, and between? to achieve a similar result. This also works for Ruby 1.8.7 which doesn't support Unicode in regular expressions.
s = 'Hi!π'#=> "Hi!\360\237\230\200"s.unpack('U*').reject{ |e| e.between?(0x1F600, 0x1F6FF) }.pack('U*')#=> "Hi!" Regarding your Rubular example β Emoji are single characters:
"π".length #=> 1"π".chars #=> ["π"]Whereas kaomoji are a combination of multiple characters:
"^_^".length #=> 3"^_^".chars #=> ["^", "_", "^"]Matching these is a very different task (and you should ask that in a separate question).
I am using one based on this script.
def strip_emoji(text) text = text.force_encoding('utf-8').encode clean = "" # symbols & pics regex = /[\u{1f300}-\u{1f5ff}]/ clean = text.gsub regex, "" # enclosed chars regex = /[\u{2500}-\u{2BEF}]/ # I changed this to exclude chinese char clean = clean.gsub regex, "" # emoticons regex = /[\u{1f600}-\u{1f64f}]/ clean = clean.gsub regex, "" #dingbats regex = /[\u{2702}-\u{27b0}]/ clean = clean.gsub regex, "" endResults:
irb> strip_emoji("π½πββ€εγΏμβ€")=> "εγΏμ"
This regex matches all 845 emoji, taken from Emoji unicode characters for use on the web:
[\u{203C}\u{2049}\u{20E3}\u{2122}\u{2139}\u{2194}-\u{2199}\u{21A9}-\u{21AA}\u{231A}-\u{231B}\u{23E9}-\u{23EC}\u{23F0}\u{23F3}\u{24C2}\u{25AA}-\u{25AB}\u{25B6}\u{25C0}\u{25FB}-\u{25FE}\u{2600}-\u{2601}\u{260E}\u{2611}\u{2614}-\u{2615}\u{261D}\u{263A}\u{2648}-\u{2653}\u{2660}\u{2663}\u{2665}-\u{2666}\u{2668}\u{267B}\u{267F}\u{2693}\u{26A0}-\u{26A1}\u{26AA}-\u{26AB}\u{26BD}-\u{26BE}\u{26C4}-\u{26C5}\u{26CE}\u{26D4}\u{26EA}\u{26F2}-\u{26F3}\u{26F5}\u{26FA}\u{26FD}\u{2702}\u{2705}\u{2708}-\u{270C}\u{270F}\u{2712}\u{2714}\u{2716}\u{2728}\u{2733}-\u{2734}\u{2744}\u{2747}\u{274C}\u{274E}\u{2753}-\u{2755}\u{2757}\u{2764}\u{2795}-\u{2797}\u{27A1}\u{27B0}\u{2934}-\u{2935}\u{2B05}-\u{2B07}\u{2B1B}-\u{2B1C}\u{2B50}\u{2B55}\u{3030}\u{303D}\u{3297}\u{3299}\u{1F004}\u{1F0CF}\u{1F170}-\u{1F171}\u{1F17E}-\u{1F17F}\u{1F18E}\u{1F191}-\u{1F19A}\u{1F1E7}-\u{1F1EC}\u{1F1EE}-\u{1F1F0}\u{1F1F3}\u{1F1F5}\u{1F1F7}-\u{1F1FA}\u{1F201}-\u{1F202}\u{1F21A}\u{1F22F}\u{1F232}-\u{1F23A}\u{1F250}-\u{1F251}\u{1F300}-\u{1F320}\u{1F330}-\u{1F335}\u{1F337}-\u{1F37C}\u{1F380}-\u{1F393}\u{1F3A0}-\u{1F3C4}\u{1F3C6}-\u{1F3CA}\u{1F3E0}-\u{1F3F0}\u{1F400}-\u{1F43E}\u{1F440}\u{1F442}-\u{1F4F7}\u{1F4F9}-\u{1F4FC}\u{1F500}-\u{1F507}\u{1F509}-\u{1F53D}\u{1F550}-\u{1F567}\u{1F5FB}-\u{1F640}\u{1F645}-\u{1F64F}\u{1F680}-\u{1F68A}]I generated this regex directly from the raw list of Unicode emoji. The algorithm is here: https://github.com/franklsf95/ruby-emoji-regex.
Example usage:
regex = /[\u{203C}\u{2049}\u{20E3}\u{2122}\u{2139}\u{2194}-\u{2199}\u{21A9}-\u{21AA}\u{231A}-\u{231B}\u{23E9}-\u{23EC}\u{23F0}\u{23F3}\u{24C2}\u{25AA}-\u{25AB}\u{25B6}\u{25C0}\u{25FB}-\u{25FE}\u{2600}-\u{2601}\u{260E}\u{2611}\u{2614}-\u{2615}\u{261D}\u{263A}\u{2648}-\u{2653}\u{2660}\u{2663}\u{2665}-\u{2666}\u{2668}\u{267B}\u{267F}\u{2693}\u{26A0}-\u{26A1}\u{26AA}-\u{26AB}\u{26BD}-\u{26BE}\u{26C4}-\u{26C5}\u{26CE}\u{26D4}\u{26EA}\u{26F2}-\u{26F3}\u{26F5}\u{26FA}\u{26FD}\u{2702}\u{2705}\u{2708}-\u{270C}\u{270F}\u{2712}\u{2714}\u{2716}\u{2728}\u{2733}-\u{2734}\u{2744}\u{2747}\u{274C}\u{274E}\u{2753}-\u{2755}\u{2757}\u{2764}\u{2795}-\u{2797}\u{27A1}\u{27B0}\u{2934}-\u{2935}\u{2B05}-\u{2B07}\u{2B1B}-\u{2B1C}\u{2B50}\u{2B55}\u{3030}\u{303D}\u{3297}\u{3299}\u{1F004}\u{1F0CF}\u{1F170}-\u{1F171}\u{1F17E}-\u{1F17F}\u{1F18E}\u{1F191}-\u{1F19A}\u{1F1E7}-\u{1F1EC}\u{1F1EE}-\u{1F1F0}\u{1F1F3}\u{1F1F5}\u{1F1F7}-\u{1F1FA}\u{1F201}-\u{1F202}\u{1F21A}\u{1F22F}\u{1F232}-\u{1F23A}\u{1F250}-\u{1F251}\u{1F300}-\u{1F320}\u{1F330}-\u{1F335}\u{1F337}-\u{1F37C}\u{1F380}-\u{1F393}\u{1F3A0}-\u{1F3C4}\u{1F3C6}-\u{1F3CA}\u{1F3E0}-\u{1F3F0}\u{1F400}-\u{1F43E}\u{1F440}\u{1F442}-\u{1F4F7}\u{1F4F9}-\u{1F4FC}\u{1F500}-\u{1F507}\u{1F509}-\u{1F53D}\u{1F550}-\u{1F567}\u{1F5FB}-\u{1F640}\u{1F645}-\u{1F64F}\u{1F680}-\u{1F68A}]/str = "I am a string with emoji πππ±π±πΏπΏππ and other Unicode characters ζ―ε¦δΈζ."str.gsub regex, ''# "I am a string with emoji and other Unicode characters ζ―ε¦δΈζ."Other Unicode characters, such as Asian characters, are preserved.
EDIT: I udpated the regex to exclude ASCII numbers and symbols. See comments for details.