# Accented characters in irb on the mac

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accented-characters-in-irb-on-the-mac/121538>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [November 28, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accented-characters-in-irb-on-the-mac/121538 "2007-11-28T19:50:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![edlau](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b19c9b/32.png) [@edlau](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/edlau)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accented-characters-in-irb-on-the-mac/121538/1 "2007-11-28T19:50:13Z")

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Hello. I’m unable to type accented characters in irb (as well as Rails’  
script/console) on the Mac running Leopard (10.5.1). I’ve done a search  
on the web and have not found mention of this problem, so perhaps I’m  
missing something obvious?

Additional info:

- I can type accented characters (é, ü) fine in Terminal. In  
Preferences, my character encoding is set to UTF-8.
- Input is fine in the mysql and python command lines as well, just not  
irb.
- My $KCODE is set to ‘u’
- Input is fine in irb on my linux box, so I have concluded that this is  
definitely a Mac irb thing (possibly Leopard?)

Thanks in advance.  
–Ed

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**Author:** ![edlau](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b19c9b/32.png) [@edlau](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/edlau)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2007, 8:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accented-characters-in-irb-on-the-mac/121538/2 "2007-11-28T20:04:34Z")

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It’s working on my Mac with Locomotive. Try that and if it works there,  
compare the environments of your terminal session and one initiated  
through Locomotive.

Cheers, -sven

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**Author:** ![edlau](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b19c9b/32.png) [@edlau](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/edlau)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2007, 8:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accented-characters-in-irb-on-the-mac/121538/3 "2007-11-28T20:46:07Z")

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On Nov 28, 2007, at 1:04 PM, Sven S. wrote:

> It’s working on my Mac with Locomotive. Try that and if it works  
> there,  
> compare the environments of your terminal session and one initiated  
> through Locomotive.

I tried it too. It works here with the terminal that locomotive sets  
up, but if you open up a fresh terminal window and just run irb it  
will probably behave differently.

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**Author:** ![edlau](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b19c9b/32.png) [@edlau](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/edlau)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2007, 8:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accented-characters-in-irb-on-the-mac/121538/4 "2007-11-28T20:58:45Z")

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George B. wrote:

> On Nov 28, 2007, at 1:04 PM, Sven S. wrote:
> 
> > It’s working on my Mac with Locomotive. Try that and if it works  
> > there,  
> > compare the environments of your terminal session and one initiated  
> > through Locomotive.
> 
> I tried it too. It works here with the terminal that locomotive sets  
> up, but if you open up a fresh terminal window and just run irb it  
> will probably behave differently.

Thanks to you and Sven for the feedback. I’m curious if others who did  
not set up rails with locomotive are seeing the same problem and/or  
might know the fix. I’d prefer not to have to set up my rails  
environment again with locomotive to solve this problem.

–Ed