How to find and count emoticons in a string using python?

Question

This topic has been addressed for text based emoticons at link1, link2, link3. However, I would like to do something slightly different than matching simple emoticons. I\'m

Answer 1

If you are trying to read unicode characters outside the ascii range, don't convert into the ascii range. Just leave it as unicode and work from there (untested):

import sys

count = 0
emoticons = set(range(int('1f600',16), int('1f650', 16)))
for row in sys.stdin:
    for char in row:
        if ord(char) in emoticons:
            count += 1
print "%d emoticons found" % count

Not the best solution, but it should work.