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Engineer discovers emoji can form valid x86 machine code

A developer found that UTF-8 encoded emoji bytes correspond to real CPU instructions, enabling programs written entirely in emoji.

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Summary, timeline and people extracted by Claude from 3 items across 2 sources · 18h ago. Quotes are verbatim.

A software engineer experimenting with an online x86 disassembler discovered that emoji, when UTF-8 encoded, produce byte sequences that are valid x86 machine code. The engineer demonstrated this by writing a Hello World program in pure emoji that executes as a DOS COM file, drawing parallels to historical efforts to create executable programs using only printable ASCII characters.

  • UTF-8 encoded emoji bytes form valid x86/8088 machine code instructions because the encoding sequence (typically F09F...) maps to real opcodes.
  • A developer demonstrated a working Hello World program executed as a DOS COM file using only emoji characters—141 bytes of pure emoji.
  • The discovery draws parallels to historical executable programs written in printable ASCII (like the EICAR test file) but applies the technique to a new character set.
  • Most emoji start with the F09F byte sequence, making them particularly suitable for this application since F0h is a recognized CPU prefix and 9Fh is a valid instruction.

How it unfolded

  1. Report OpenMoji project updated to v17.0.0

    OpenMoji, an open source emoji library, releases version 17.0.0 with support for the latest Unicode Emoji standard and 4495 total emoji designs.

  2. Event Engineer discovers emoji-to-opcode equivalence

    While testing an online x86 disassembler, the engineer noticed that pasting a goat emoji (🐐) produced the hex encoding %F0%9F%90%90. Breaking this down, they realized 90h is the NOP opcode, F0h is the LOCK prefix, and the sequence forms valid 8088 machine code.

    “Could you actually write an 8088 program using nothing but displayable emoji?”

    Engineer at martypc.blogspot.com · Hacker News ↗
  3. Event Hello World program written in pure emoji

    The engineer created a working DOS COM executable that prints "HELLO" using only emoji characters. When saved as UTF-8 with a .COM extension, the 141-byte program produces an MD5 sum of 0a5c91475ca2de33e36aacc2f0b7b840.

    “Pasted into a text editor and saved as UTF-8, no BOM, with a .COM file extension, the result should be 141 bytes with an MD5 sum of 0a5c91475ca2de33e36aacc2f0b7b840.”

    Engineer at martypc.blogspot.com · Hacker News ↗
  4. Reaction Hacker News coverage gains attention

    The blog post about executable emoji reaches Hacker News with a score of 57 and 19 comments, indicating significant technical interest in the concept.

  5. Reaction Lobsters discussion begins

    The Lobsters community discusses the concept of making useful DOS executables entirely from emoji, framing it as an interesting technical experiment.

What people are saying verbatim

“Could you actually write an 8088 program using nothing but displayable emoji?”

Engineer at martypc.blogspot.com, Software developer · martypc.blogspot.com ↗ · Aug 6

“The entire goat emoji is valid 8088 machine code, a sequence that reads lock lahf nop nop”

Engineer at martypc.blogspot.com, Software developer · martypc.blogspot.com ↗ · Aug 6

“It surprises me that the idea of directly executing emoji has apparently never been explored.”

Engineer at martypc.blogspot.com, Software developer · martypc.blogspot.com ↗ · Aug 6

“As it turns out, the vast majority of emoji graphemes, as they are called, start with the sequence F09F.”

Engineer at martypc.blogspot.com, Software developer · martypc.blogspot.com ↗ · Aug 6