How to get a Unicode number?

hydraMax · 07-07-2011, 10:33 PM

Stupid, trivial question -- But what is the easiest way to figure out the Unicode number of a character when you already have the character?

For instance, I pasted this character here from a PDF:

Code:

⊥

corp769 · 07-07-2011, 10:39 PM

Hello,

Most distros will come with a character map-like program, just like in windows. I know that in Fedora, you go to Applications, Accessories, Character Map (or something else - I forget what it is called off the top of my head.) You could also use google and find a reference to a chart or something similar; Have a look here - http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~tomw/java/unicode.html

Cheers,

Josh

hydraMax · 07-07-2011, 11:03 PM

Figured it out...

Code:

# ghci
GHCi, version 7.0.4: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/  :? for help
Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done.
Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done.
Loading package base ... linking ... done.
Loading package ffi-1.0 ... linking ... done.
Prelude> "⊥"
"\8869"

Of course, you may need to convert that to hexadecimal.

Another alternative is to do what I did inadvertently, which is to post the character to this forum, and then look at the forum post HTML source, which will have converted the character to &#DDDD.

corp769 · 07-08-2011, 11:15 AM

There you go then

David the H. · 07-09-2011, 10:47 AM

Install uniutils, which includes the uniname command.

Code:

$ echo -n "⊥" | uniname
character  byte       UTF-32   encoded as     glyph   name
        0          0  0022A5   E2 8A A5       ⊥      UP TACK

The UTF32 output is equal to the unicode codepoint, in hex (minus the leading zeroes).

Unfortunately uniname doesn't have an option to print only the UTF32/codepoint value, so you have to use awk or similar to extract it. Here are a couple of gawk one-liners that will print the code in hex and decimal form:

Code:

$ echo -n "⊥" | uniname -bcgnp | awk 'NR != 1 { gsub( /^0*/ ,"" , $1 ) ; print $1 }'
22A5
$ echo -n "⊥" | uniname -bcgnp | awk 'NR != 1 { gsub( /^0*/ ,"0x" , $1 ) ; print strtonum( $1 ) }'
8869