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Unicode deals with characters as abstract terms.
#ITERATE OVER STRING ANDROID CODEPOINTS CODE#
Pure lottery! 2.1 Characters and code pointsĪbstract character (or character) is a unit of information used for the organization, control, or representation of textual data. I still remember picking random charsets and encodings to read the content of files. If you think that Unicode is hard, programming without Unicode would be even more difficult. It was complicated to create an application that supports all character sets and encodings. The universal and embracing approach of Unicode solves a major problem that existed before when vendors implemented a lot of character sets and encodings that were difficult to handle. The latest version 14.0 (published in September 2021) provides codes for 144,697 characters. The first Unicode version 1.0 was published in October 1991 and had 7,161 characters. Unicode includes characters from most of today's languages, punctuation marks, diacritics, mathematical symbols, technical symbols, arrows, emoji, and more. Unicode is a universal character set that defines the list of characters from the majority of the writing systems, and associates for every character a unique number (code point). Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language. The role of Unicode is to provide a list of abstract characters (character set) and assign to each character a unique identifier code point (coded character set). This character has the corresponding number 0圆8, which is a code point in notation U+0068. In terms of Unicode, h is an abstract character named LATIN SMALL LETTER H. The agreement between the two computers about the correspondence between letters and numbers is what Unicode standardizes. Then it displays the correct message: 'hello'. When the computer of User2 receives the sequence of numbers 0圆8 0圆5 0圆C 0圆C 0圆F, it uses the same letter to number correspondence and restores the message. These numbers are sent to User2's computer. So it transforms 'hello' into a sequence of numbers 0圆8 0圆5 0圆C 0圆C 0圆F, where each letter uniquely corresponds to a number: h is 0圆8, e is 0圆5, etc. User1's computer doesn't know the meaning of letters. Imagine the User1 sends through the network a message 'hello' to User2. For computers, the letters are just sequences of bits. The difference is that computers don't understand the meaning of letters. Why are you able to understand the meaning of letters? Simply: because you (reader) and me (writer) have an agreement over the association between the graphical symbol (what is seen on the screen) and the English language letter (the meaning). How are you able to read and understand the current article? Simply: because you know the meaning of letters and words as a group of letters.
#ITERATE OVER STRING ANDROID CODEPOINTS HOW TO#
You'll learn also how to apply new ECMAScript 2015 features to solve a part of the difficulties. Then it clarifies how JavaScript works with Unicode and what traps you may encounter. The post explains the basic concepts of Unicode, creating the necessary ground. And let's dive into the wonderful world of abstraction, characters, astrals, and surrogates. Make yourself a tasteful tea or coffee ☕. If you have gaps in understanding Unicode, now is the right time to face it! It's not that hard. some articles have required reading at least 3 times.Īs it turns out, Unicode is a universal and elegant standard, but it may be tough because of a bunch of abstract terms it operates with.
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There was no way to apply situational solutions.Īfter putting in some effort, reading a bunch of articles - surprisingly it wasn't hard to understand it. My avoidance continued until I faced a problem that required detailed Unicode knowledge. When a programming task required Unicode knowledge, I was searching for a hackable solution for the problem, without a good understanding of what I was doing. This story starts with a confession: I was afraid of Unicode for a long time.
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