Is there a Pac-Man-like character in ASCII or Unicode?

Question

Simple question: is there a character that looks either like Pac-Man, or like the ghost in Pac-Man?

With Google's recent Pac-Man logo, everyone should know what these look like, but in case you don't here are some sample images:

enter image description here

If you answer "no" please provide a little more proof that you actually searched all unicode characters...

Example of what I'm looking for: If I were to ask, "is there a character that looks like a sun", I would expect an answer along the lines of "Yes, ☼ and according to charmap it is U+263C". That's what I'm looking for, but with Pac-Man or the ghost...

Usage: I would like to paste this symbol into a web form textbox in order for it to show on a webpage. This is a one-line textbox, so a complex ASCII art "image" isn't acceptable in this case.

So you, if we answer "no", you expect us to prove it by checking every unicode character? In other words, you want us to do the work for you? — , Jun 09 '10 at 17:18
Unicode U+25D4 http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/25d4/index.htm. There's also plenty of hollow triangles in the same block should you be thinking of building an asteroids clone! :) — mdma, Jun 09 '10 at 17:20
@Neil If you use A they'll get confused and say WTF is the Asteroids ship doing in PACMAN??? — vivin, Jun 09 '10 at 17:22
@Chris: No, he's saying that if you're not sure, don't say "no". That's pretty reasonable. — Tim Sullivan, Sep 29 '10 at 17:20
Back in the 8-bit era I saw a five-line game inspired by Pacman. I don't recall what it used for the main character, but the ghost was a reverse-video `"`. — deltab, Jul 20 '16 at 13:59
We've come a long way since this was originally posted -- now Pacman is just about* the only thing we *don't* have! Ghost Cherry Strawberry Orange Apple Melon Bell Key (* ok, and the Galaxian Boss...) — A C, Mar 22 '17 at 21:25

score 71 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 16 '11 at 01:56

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ᗤ <- pacman, also a ghost ᗣ got here by google, someone else will be looking for it, don't remember the unicode for it but i copied the characters from a old file.

answered Nov 16 '11 at 01:56

thomas

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Good find. ᗣ is U+15E3, ᗤ U+15E4, and ᗧ U+15E7. They're labeled as CANADIAN SYLLABICS CARRIER TTO, TTE, and TTA, respectively. – eswald Apr 18 '12 at 16:55
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Hence, Pᗣᗧ•••MᗣN ? – Gnubie Apr 10 '13 at 17:02
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Hence 2, ᗧ•••ᗣ•• – Aviel Gross Mar 29 '15 at 17:30
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·····•····· ᗤ ᗣᗣᗣᗣ – Darth Android Jun 20 '15 at 05:34
And Up is ᗢ U+15E7 ("TTU") – smci May 25 '18 at 00:35
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ᗧ···········ᗣ – Aleks Dorohovich Mar 25 '19 at 05:04

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 11 '10 at 22:51

11

I know it's not quite what you asked, but Pacman makes an appearance in the discotastic DF Strand Midnight typeface.

DF Strand

answered Oct 11 '10 at 22:51

paradroid

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score 10 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 09 '10 at 17:15

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It's not looking good -- presumably, anything resembling Pac-Man would be in the "Geometric Shapes" block, but the closest you'll get is a circle that's 1/4 filled:

◔
◕
◴ ◵ ◶ ◷

answered Jun 09 '10 at 17:15

Mark Rushakoff

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I like the first one you posed; I used it and it is close enough to Pac-Man; you can definitely see the resemblance! Thanks :) – Ricket Jun 09 '10 at 18:13
The copyright symbol looks more like it than those ;-) Or the letter C – barlop Dec 08 '17 at 18:28

score 10 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

For finding unicode symbols that look like things, I use the shapecatcher.com website. It allows you to draw an example and then does an image search. Though you may need to use a few tries to find what you're looking for. This is surprisingly handy to use, for example I've used it to look for unicode characters that look like application icons.

If I draw a crude left-facing Pacman outline, about half-way through the results I get the

Canadian syllabics carrier tte: ᗤ

as found in the top answer.

score 7 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 04:10

7

No. Unicode does not provide amusing characters just for the fun of it--all of the wacky characters in Unicode (like the snowman and the sun) are there because some legacy encoding included them.

No legacy character set ever had a Pac-Man character. Hence, Pac-Man is not in Unicode.

If you're trying to find out if there's some oddball character that kinda-sorta resembles Pac-Man, you'll have to look through all of the codepages yourself.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 04:10

Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style

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answered Jun 09 '10 at 17:14

JSBձոգչ

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What about the snowman? ☃ He's kind of an amusing character. – mipadi Jun 09 '10 at 17:16
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I mentioned the snowman as an example of an oddball character that's in a legacy character set. – JSBձոգչ Jun 09 '10 at 17:20
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@mipadi: The snowman is a weather symbol. – Joey Jun 09 '10 at 17:21
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What about emojis? Do they all map to some **legacy** Unicode code point? – CodeManX Apr 08 '16 at 01:04
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This is now outdated, what with and emojis. – Piskvor left the building Oct 10 '18 at 07:43

score 7 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 21 '12 at 20:45

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This is the most similar I could find:

ᗧ

answered Dec 21 '12 at 20:45

WhyNotHugo

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score 5 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 26 '22 at 03:41

On 1/25/2022 Pacman glyph in all (four) directions got accepted to Unicode as part of the 731 legacy computing symbols proposed in L2/21-235 in a new block named "Symbols for Legacy Computing Supplement" for a future version of the Unicode standard.

See pages 22 and 26 in above linked proposal; under "Game Sprites" symbols 1CC6B to 1CC6E.

This was announced by The Unicode Consortium on Twitter

score 5 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 09 '10 at 17:17

5

No.

If you answer "no" please provide a little more proof that you actually searched all unicode characters...

Did you search all the unicode characters?

answered Jun 09 '10 at 17:17

Timothy

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I guess they didn't want to put that much effort in it :) – Joey Jun 09 '10 at 17:23
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Thanks for contributing nothing with a low-effort "answer". – Navin Dec 28 '16 at 05:20

score 5 · Answer 9 · answered Nov 28 '11 at 03:27

5

( *< • • •

^ closest I can get to making Pacman with text

answered Nov 28 '11 at 03:27

Cody

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score 4 · Answer 10 · edited Aug 20 '11 at 05:03

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ଓ

I think this looks like Pac-Man!

edited Aug 20 '11 at 05:03

Gaff

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answered Sep 29 '10 at 17:16

score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Jan 03 '16 at 04:27

I know CSS3 is kind'a cheating but could not resist rotating 45deg.. and adding animation to make pack-man "chew"..

https://jsbin.com/nasexevolo/edit?html,css,output

it's also content-dynamic, since you can place any two symbos in state-a and state-b

:) ☕

score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 22 '10 at 03:54

2

The list of characters slated for Unicode 6.0 includes U+1F47B GHOST.

answered Jun 22 '10 at 03:54

user46971

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Hmm, [it](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f47b/browsertest.htm) [doesn’t look](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f47b/ghost.png) like a ghost. `o.O` – Synetech Dec 21 '12 at 21:31
@Synetech Eh, kinda. [This](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PEc3o.png) is what it looks like in my browser. – Bob Jun 14 '13 at 02:59
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It depends on the font. Different browsers use different default styles and thus font families. – CodeManX Apr 08 '16 at 01:05

Is there a Pac-Man-like character in ASCII or Unicode?

12 Answers12

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