Using the # symbol in Pascal to type characters past 127 range

Question

I know that in pascal you can use the # character to display certain characters like tab(#9), carriage return line feed(#13#10), ect.
When I try to do other characters out of the 127 range like #169 it replaces it with a question mark.
How do I change the character encoding in lazarus so I can use this character?

Answer 1

According to Free Pascal:

The # indicates the control string

The control string can be used to specify characters which cannot be typed on a keyboard, such as #27 for the escape character.

See free pascal character strings.

The above page also mentions:

It is possible to use other character sets in strings: in that case the codepage of the source file must be specified with the {$CODEPAGE XXX} directive or with the -Fc command line option for the compiler. In that case the characters in a string will be interpreted as characters from the specified codepage.

For example, If you wanted to encode with UTF-8 you could use (see this page):

{$CODEPAGE UTF8}
{$Mode ObjFPC}{$H+}

(If you are on windows you can choose from these code pages.)

I tested the following example on my mac with the fpc (free pascal compiler):

program Example;
{$CODEPAGE utf8}
{$Mode ObjFPC}{$H+}
Begin
   writeln('Hello World'#13#10);
   writeln('carriage return line');
   writeln('Example: '#$C3#$A4);
End.

This example prints out the ä character and is a modification of the examples on the dealing with UTF8 in free pascal page, which will help you a lot with this issue. You may have to adjust the solutions on that page to fit your problem.

Note, that I was able to access the ä character because I used it's hex value C3A4.