Python. Chess symbol in windows cmd

Question

How to print chess symbol in windows cmd?

print '♛'

I got 'тЩЫ'.

Which is not possible on Windows cmd. The terminal itself does not support it. — Santa, Mar 07 '12 at 23:41
@NiklasB., yes it does if you issue a `chcp 65001` command first. And as of Python 3.3 it's supported by Python. — Mark Ransom, Mar 07 '12 at 23:42

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 07 '12 at 23:41

The Windows Cmd window uses Code Page 437 which doesn't contain any chess characters.

>>> print ''.join([chr(x) for x in range(256)])
 ☺☻♥♦
♫☼►◄↕‼¶§▬↨↑↓→←∟↔▲▼ !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]
^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~⌂ÇüéâäàåçêëèïîìÄÅÉæÆôöòûùÿÖÜ¢£¥₧ƒáíóúñÑªº¿⌐¬½¼¡
«»░▒▓│┤╡╢╖╕╣║╗╝╜╛┐└┴┬├─┼╞╟╚╔╩╦╠═╬╧╨╤╥╙╘╒╓╫╪┘┌█▄▌▐▀αßΓπΣσµτΦΘΩδ∞φε∩≡±≥≤⌠⌡÷≈°∙·√ⁿ²
■

Python 3.3 just added the ability to use code page 65001 which is UTF-8. Use the command chcp 65001 before running Python.

@MarkTolonen, very good point. Doesn't change anything though, as I doubt any other code pages used by cmd include chess symbols. — Mark Ransom, Mar 08 '12 at 13:56

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

2

You have a couple of options that I can see, an easy one and a hard one...

Use an alternative terminal than windows cmd. I like console.
Launch the console using a Shell Link (.LNK) file, which allows you to specify a font. You might not get all of unicode, but other fonts definitely have better support for funny characters than the default. (Stolen from this answer).

edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

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answered Mar 07 '12 at 23:46

wim

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Python. Chess symbol in windows cmd

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