How can I split a string containing emoji into an array?

Question

(You'll need Firefox or Safari to see the emoji in the code.)

I want to take a string of emoji and do something with the individual characters.

In JavaScript "😴😄😃⛔🎠🚓🚇".length == 13 because "⛔" length is 1, the rest are 2. So we can't do

var string = "😴😄😃⛔🎠🚓🚇"; s = string.split("");  c = []; c[0] = s[0]+s[1]; console.log(c);

Answer 1

JavaScript ES6 has a solution!, for a real split:

[..."😴😄😃⛔🎠🚓🚇"] // ["😴", "😄", "😃", "⛔", "🎠", "🚓", "🚇"] 

Yay? Except for the fact that when you run this through your transpiler, it might not work (see @brainkim's comment). It only works when natively run on an ES6-compliant browser. Luckily this encompasses most browsers (Safari, Chrome, FF), but if you're looking for high browser compatibility this is not the solution for you.