# Re: Strange print

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-strange-print/53294>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [January 31, 2006, 5:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-strange-print/53294 "2006-01-31T17:02:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Gennady\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@Gennady\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gennady_B)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 5:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-strange-print/53294/1 "2006-01-31T17:02:52Z")

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I am not completely sure, but you can try to play with $KCODE variable  
settings. I am sure you know this, put ‘p “abc”’ is equivalent to ‘puts  
“abc”.inspect’ and ‘inspect’ outputs non-printable characters in escaped  
form (like ‘\n’ or ‘\326’).

UPDATE: I just checked that with $KCODE = ‘u’, p shows “College” in  
Russian just like that – “bea[u]tiful text” ;-).

Gennady.