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Query the Unicode database from the commandline, with good support for emojis
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arp242/uni
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uni queries the Unicode database from the commandline. It supports Unicode15.1 (September 2023) and has good support for emojis.
There are four commands:identify codepoints in a string,search forcodepoints,print codepoints by class, block, or range, andemoji to findemojis.
There are binaries on thereleases page, andpackages for a number ofplatforms. You can alsorun it in your browser.
Compile from source with:
% go install zgo.at/uni/v2@latestwhich will give you auni binary in~/go/bin.
README index:
dmenu,rofi, andfzf script at
dmenu-uni. See the top ofthe script for some options you may want to frob with.For a Vim command see
uni.vim; just copy/paste it in your vimrc.
Note: the alignment is slightly off for some entries due to the way GitHubrenders wide characters; in terminals it should be aligned correctly.
Identify characters in a string, as a kind of a unicode-awarehexdump:
% uni identify € Dec UTF8 HTML Name'€' U+20AC 8364 e2 82 ac € EURO SIGNi is a shortcut foridentify:
% uni i h€ý Dec UTF8 HTML Name'h' U+0068 104 68 h LATIN SMALL LETTER H'€' U+20AC 8364 e2 82 ac € EURO SIGN'ý' U+00FD 253 c3 bd ý LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTEIt reads from stdin:
% head -c5 README.md | uni i CPoint Dec UTF8 HTML Name '`' U+0060 96 60 ` GRAVE ACCENT [backtick, backquote] 'u' U+0075 117 75 u LATIN SMALL LETTER U 'n' U+006E 110 6e n LATIN SMALL LETTER N 'i' U+0069 105 69 i LATIN SMALL LETTER I '`' U+0060 96 60 ` GRAVE ACCENT [backtick, backquote]% echo 'U+1234 U+1111' | uni p CPoint Dec UTF8 HTML Name'ᄑ' U+1111 4369 e1 84 91 ᄑ HANGUL CHOSEONG PHIEUPH [P]'ሴ' U+1234 4660 e1 88 b4 ሴ ETHIOPIC SYLLABLE SEEYou can use-compact (or-c) to suppress the header, and-format (or-f)to control the output format:
% uni i -f '%unicode %name' a€🧟Unicode Name1.1 LATIN SMALL LETTER A2.1 EURO SIGN10.0 ZOMBIEIf the format string starts with+ it will automatically be prepended with thecharacter, codepoint, and name:
% uni i -f +%unicode a€🧟 Name Unicode'a' U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A 1.1'€' U+20AC EURO SIGN 2.1'🧟' U+1F9DF ZOMBIE 10.0You can add more advanced options with%(name flags); for example to generatean aligned codepoint to X11 keysym mapping:
% uni i -c -f '0x%(hex l:auto f:0): %(keysym l:auto q:":",) // %name' h€ý0x6800: "h", // LATIN SMALL LETTER H0x20ac: "EuroSign", // EURO SIGN0xfd00: "yacute", // LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTESeeuni help for more details on the-format flag; this flag can also beadded to other commands.
Search description:
% uni search euro Dec UTF8 HTML Name'₠' U+20A0 8352 e2 82 a0 ₠ EURO-CURRENCY SIGN'€' U+20AC 8364 e2 82 ac € EURO SIGN'𐡷' U+10877 67703 f0 90 a1 b7 𐡷 PALMYRENE LEFT-POINTING FLEURON'𐡸' U+10878 67704 f0 90 a1 b8 𐡸 PALMYRENE RIGHT-POINTING FLEURON'𐫱' U+10AF1 68337 f0 90 ab b1 𐫱 MANICHAEAN PUNCTUATION FLEURON'🌍' U+1F30D 127757 f0 9f 8c 8d 🌍 EARTH GLOBE EUROPE-AFRICA'🏤' U+1F3E4 127972 f0 9f 8f a4 🏤 EUROPEAN POST OFFICE'🏰' U+1F3F0 127984 f0 9f 8f b0 🏰 EUROPEAN CASTLE'💶' U+1F4B6 128182 f0 9f 92 b6 💶 BANKNOTE WITH EURO SIGNThes command is a shortcut forsearch. Multiple words are matchedindividually:
% uni s globe earth Dec UTF8 HTML Name'🌍' U+1F30D 127757 f0 9f 8c 8d 🌍 EARTH GLOBE EUROPE-AFRICA'🌎' U+1F30E 127758 f0 9f 8c 8e 🌎 EARTH GLOBE AMERICAS'🌏' U+1F30F 127759 f0 9f 8c 8f 🌏 EARTH GLOBE ASIA-AUSTRALIAUse shell quoting for more literal matches:
% uni s rightwards black arrow Dec UTF8 HTML Name'➡' U+27A1 10145 e2 9e a1 ➡ BLACK RIGHTWARDS ARROW'➤' U+27A4 10148 e2 9e a4 ➤ BLACK RIGHTWARDS ARROWHEAD…% uni s 'rightwards black arrow' Dec UTF8 HTML Name'⮕' U+2B95 11157 e2 ae 95 ⮕ RIGHTWARDS BLACK ARROWAdd-or or-o to combine the search terms with "OR" instead of "AND":
% uni s -o globe milky Dec UTF8 HTML Name'🌌' U+1F30C 127756 f0 9f 8c 8c 🌌 MILKY WAY'🌍' U+1F30D 127757 f0 9f 8c 8d 🌍 EARTH GLOBE EUROPE-AFRICA'🌎' U+1F30E 127758 f0 9f 8c 8e 🌎 EARTH GLOBE AMERICAS'🌏' U+1F30F 127759 f0 9f 8c 8f 🌏 EARTH GLOBE ASIA-AUSTRALIA'🌐' U+1F310 127760 f0 9f 8c 90 🌐 GLOBE WITH MERIDIANSPrint specific codepoints or groups of codepoints:
% uni print U+2042 Dec UTF8 HTML Name'⁂' U+2042 8258 e2 81 82 ⁂ ASTERISMPrint a custom range;U+2042,U2042, and2042 are all identical:
% uni print 2042..2044 Dec UTF8 HTML Name'⁂' U+2042 8258 e2 81 82 ⁂ ASTERISM'⁃' U+2043 8259 e2 81 83 ⁃ HYPHEN BULLET'⁄' U+2044 8260 e2 81 84 ⁄ FRACTION SLASH [solidus]You can also use hex, octal, and binary numbers:0x2024,0o20102, or0b10000001000010.
General category:
% uni p PoShowing category Po (Other_Punctuation) Dec UTF8 HTML Name'!' U+0021 33 21 ! EXCLAMATION MARK [factorial, bang]…Blocks:
% uni p arrows 'box drawing'Showing block ArrowsShowing block Box Drawing Dec UTF8 HTML Name'←' U+2190 8592 e2 86 90 ← LEFTWARDS ARROW'↑' U+2191 8593 e2 86 91 ↑ UPWARDS ARROW…Print as table, and with a shorter name:
% uni p -as table boxShowing block Box Drawing 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────U+250x │ ─ ━ │ ┃ ┄ ┅ ┆ ┇ ┈ ┉ ┊ ┋ ┌ ┍ ┎ ┏ │U+251x │ ┐ ┑ ┒ ┓ └ ┕ ┖ ┗ ┘ ┙ ┚ ┛ ├ ┝ ┞ ┟ │U+252x │ ┠ ┡ ┢ ┣ ┤ ┥ ┦ ┧ ┨ ┩ ┪ ┫ ┬ ┭ ┮ ┯ │U+253x │ ┰ ┱ ┲ ┳ ┴ ┵ ┶ ┷ ┸ ┹ ┺ ┻ ┼ ┽ ┾ ┿ │U+254x │ ╀ ╁ ╂ ╃ ╄ ╅ ╆ ╇ ╈ ╉ ╊ ╋ ╌ ╍ ╎ ╏ │U+255x │ ═ ║ ╒ ╓ ╔ ╕ ╖ ╗ ╘ ╙ ╚ ╛ ╜ ╝ ╞ ╟ │U+256x │ ╠ ╡ ╢ ╣ ╤ ╥ ╦ ╧ ╨ ╩ ╪ ╫ ╬ ╭ ╮ ╯ │U+257x │ ╰ ╱ ╲ ╳ ╴ ╵ ╶ ╷ ╸ ╹ ╺ ╻ ╼ ╽ ╾ ╿ │Or more compact table:
% uni p -as table box -compact 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────U+250x │ ─ ━ │ ┃ ┄ ┅ ┆ ┇ ┈ ┉ ┊ ┋ ┌ ┍ ┎ ┏U+251x │ ┐ ┑ ┒ ┓ └ ┕ ┖ ┗ ┘ ┙ ┚ ┛ ├ ┝ ┞ ┟U+252x │ ┠ ┡ ┢ ┣ ┤ ┥ ┦ ┧ ┨ ┩ ┪ ┫ ┬ ┭ ┮ ┯U+253x │ ┰ ┱ ┲ ┳ ┴ ┵ ┶ ┷ ┸ ┹ ┺ ┻ ┼ ┽ ┾ ┿U+254x │ ╀ ╁ ╂ ╃ ╄ ╅ ╆ ╇ ╈ ╉ ╊ ╋ ╌ ╍ ╎ ╏U+255x │ ═ ║ ╒ ╓ ╔ ╕ ╖ ╗ ╘ ╙ ╚ ╛ ╜ ╝ ╞ ╟U+256x │ ╠ ╡ ╢ ╣ ╤ ╥ ╦ ╧ ╨ ╩ ╪ ╫ ╬ ╭ ╮ ╯U+257x │ ╰ ╱ ╲ ╳ ╴ ╵ ╶ ╷ ╸ ╹ ╺ ╻ ╼ ╽ ╾ ╿Theemoji command (shortcut:e) is is the real reason I wrote this:
% uni e cryName CLDR🥹face holding back tears [admiration, aww, cry, embarrassed, feelings, grateful, gratitude, joy, please, proud, resist, sad]😢crying face [awful, feels, miss, sad, tear, triste, unhappy]😭loudly crying face [bawling, sad, sob, tear, tears, unhappy]😿crying cat [animal, face, sad, tear]🔮crystal ball [fairy, fairytale, fantasy, fortune, future, magic, tale, tool]By default both the name and CLDR data are searched; the CLDR data is a list ofkeywords for an emoji; prefix withname: orn: to search on the name only:
% uni e smileName CLDR😀grinning face [cheerful, cheery, happy, laugh, nice, smile, smiling, teeth]😃grinning face with big eyes [awesome, happy, mouth, open, smile, smiling, teeth, yay]…% uni e name:smileName CLDR😼cat with wry smile [animal, face, ironic]As you can see, the CLDR is pretty useful, as "smile" only gives one result asmost emojis use "smiling".
Prefix withgroup: to search by group:
% uni e group:handsName CLDR👏clapping hands [applause, approval, awesome, congrats, congratulations, excited, good, great, homie, job, nice, prayed, well, yay]🙌raising hands [celebration, gesture, hooray, praise, raised]🫶heart hands [<3, love, you]👐open hands [hug, jazz, swerve]🤲palms up together [cupped, dua, hands, pray, prayer, wish]🤝handshake [agreement, deal, meeting]🙏folded hands [appreciate, ask, beg, blessed, bow, cmon, five, gesture, high, please, pray, thanks, thx]Group and search can be combined, andgroup: can be abbreviated tog::
% uni e g:cat-face grinName CLDR😺grinning cat [animal, face, mouth, open, smile, smiling]😸grinning cat with smiling eyes [animal, face, smile]Like withsearch, use-or to OR the parameters together instead of AND:
% uni e -or g:face-glasses g:face-hatName CLDR🤠cowboy hat face [cowgirl]🥳partying face [bday, birthday, celebrate, celebration, excited, happy, hat, hooray, horn]🥸disguised face [eyebrow, glasses, incognito, moustache, mustache, nose, person, spy, tache, tash]😎smiling face with sunglasses [awesome, beach, bright, bro, chilling, cool, rad, relaxed, shades, slay, smile, style, swag, win]🤓nerd face [brainy, clever, expert, geek, gifted, glasses, intelligent, smart]🧐face with monocle [classy, fancy, rich, stuffy, wealthy]Apply skin tone modifiers with-tone:
% uni e -tone dark g:handsName CLDR👏🏿clapping hands: dark skin tone [applause, approval, awesome, congrats, congratulations, excited, good, great, homie, job, nice, prayed, well, yay]🙌🏿raising hands: dark skin tone [celebration, gesture, hooray, praise, raised]🫶🏿heart hands: dark skin tone [<3, love, you]👐🏿open hands: dark skin tone [hug, jazz, swerve]🤲🏿palms up together: dark skin tone [cupped, dua, hands, pray, prayer, wish]🤝🏿handshake: dark skin tone [agreement, deal, meeting]🙏🏿folded hands: dark skin tone [appreciate, ask, beg, blessed, bow, cmon, five, gesture, high, please, pray, thanks, thx]The handshake emoji supports setting individual skin tones per hand sinceUnicode 14, but this isn't supported, mostly because I can't really really thinka good CLI interface for setting this without breaking compatibility (there aresome other emojis too, like "holding hands" and "kissing" where you can set boththe gender and skin tone of both sides individually). Maybe for uni v3 someday.
The default is to display only the gender-neutral "person", but this can bechanged with the-gender option:
% uni e -gender man g:person-gestureName CLDR🙍♂️man frowning [annoyed, disappointed, disgruntled, disturbed, frustrated, gesture, irritated, person, upset]🙎♂️man pouting [disappointed, downtrodden, frown, grimace, person, scowl, sulk, upset, whine]🙅♂️man gesturing NO [forbidden, gesture, hand, not, person, prohibit]🙆♂️man gesturing OK [exercise, gesture, hand, omg, person]💁♂️man tipping hand [fetch, flick, flip, gossip, person, sarcasm, sarcastic, sassy, seriously, whatever]🙋♂️man raising hand [gesture, here, know, me, person, pick, question, raise]🧏♂️deaf man [accessibility, ear, gesture, hear, person]🙇♂️man bowing [apology, ask, beg, favor, forgive, gesture, meditate, meditation, person, pity, regret, sorry]🤦♂️man facepalming [again, bewilder, disbelief, exasperation, no, not, oh, omg, person, shock, smh]🤷♂️man shrugging [doubt, dunno, guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, knows, maybe, person, whatever, who]Both-tone and-gender accept multiple values.-gender women,man willdisplay both the female and male variants, and-tone light,dark will displayboth a light and dark skin tone; useall to display all skin tones or genders:
% uni e -tone light,dark -gender f,m shrugName CLDR🤷🏻♂️man shrugging: light skin tone [doubt, dunno, guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, knows, maybe, person, whatever, who]🤷🏻♀️woman shrugging: light skin tone [doubt, dunno, guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, knows, maybe, person, whatever, who]🤷🏿♂️man shrugging: dark skin tone [doubt, dunno, guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, knows, maybe, person, whatever, who]🤷🏿♀️woman shrugging: dark skin tone [doubt, dunno, guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, knows, maybe, person, whatever, who]Likeprint andidentify, you can use-format:
% uni e g:cat-face -c -format '%(name): %(emoji)'grinning cat: 😺grinning cat with smiling eyes: 😸cat with tears of joy: 😹smiling cat with heart-eyes: 😻cat with wry smile: 😼kissing cat: 😽weary cat: 🙀crying cat: 😿pouting cat: 😾Seeuni help for more details on the-format flag.
With-as json or-as j you can output the data as JSON:
% uni i -as json h€ý[{"aliases": "","char": "h","cpoint": "U+0068","dec": "104","html": "h","name": "LATIN SMALL LETTER H","utf8": "68"}, {"aliases": "","char": "€","cpoint": "U+20AC","dec": "8364","html": "€","name": "EURO SIGN","utf8": "e2 82 ac"}, {"aliases": "","char": "ý","cpoint": "U+00FD","dec": "253","html": "ý","name": "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE","utf8": "c3 bd"}]All the columns listed in-f will be included; you can use-f all to includeall columns:
% uni i -as json -f all h€ý[{"aliases": "","bin": "1101000","block": "Basic Latin","cat": "Lowercase_Letter","cells": "1","char": "h","cpoint": "U+0068","dec": "104","digraph": "h","hex": "68","html": "h","json": "\\u0068","keysym": "h","name": "LATIN SMALL LETTER H","oct": "150","plane": "Basic Multilingual Plane","props": "","refs": "U+04BB, U+210E","script": "Latin","unicode": "1.1","utf16be": "00 68","utf16le": "68 00","utf8": "68","width": "neutral","xml": "h"}, {"aliases": "","bin": "10000010101100","block": "Currency Symbols","cat": "Currency_Symbol","cells": "1","char": "€","cpoint": "U+20AC","dec": "8364","digraph": "=e","hex": "20ac","html": "€","json": "\\u20ac","keysym": "EuroSign","name": "EURO SIGN","oct": "20254","plane": "Basic Multilingual Plane","props": "","refs": "U+20A0","script": "Common","unicode": "2.1","utf16be": "20 ac","utf16le": "ac 20","utf8": "e2 82 ac","width": "ambiguous","xml": "€"}, {"aliases": "","bin": "11111101","block": "Latin-1 Supplement","cat": "Lowercase_Letter","cells": "1","char": "ý","cpoint": "U+00FD","dec": "253","digraph": "y'","hex": "fd","html": "ý","json": "\\u00fd","keysym": "yacute","name": "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE","oct": "375","plane": "Basic Multilingual Plane","props": "","refs": "","script": "Latin","unicode": "1.1","utf16be": "00 fd","utf16le": "fd 00","utf8": "c3 bd","width": "narrow","xml": "ý"}]This also works for theemoji command:
% uni e -as json -f all 'kissing cat'[{"cldr": "animal, closed, eye, eyes, face","cldr_full": "animal, cat, closed, eye, eyes, face, kiss, kissing","cpoint": "U+1F63D","emoji": "😽","group": "Smileys & Emotion","name": "kissing cat","subgroup": "cat-face"}]All values are always a string, even numerical values. This makes things a biteasier/consistent as JSON doesn't support hex literals and such. Usejq orsome other tool if you want to process the data further.
Moved toCHANGELOG.md.
Re-generate the Unicode data withgo generate unidata. Files are cached inunidata/.cache, so clear that if you want to update the files from remote.This requires zsh and GNU awk (gawk).
Note this is from ~2017/2018 when I first wrote this; I don't re-evaluate everyprogram every year, and I don't go finding newly created tools every yeareither.
https://github.com/philpennock/character
More or less similar to uni, but very different CLI, and has some additionalfeatures. Seems pretty good.
https://github.com/sindresorhus/emoj
Doesn't support emojis sequences (e.g. MAN SHRUGGING is PERSON SHRUGGING +MAN, FIREFIGHTER is PERSON + FIRE TRUCK, etc); quite slow for a CLI program(
emoj smilingtakes 1.8s on my system, sometimes a lot longer), searchresults are pretty bad (shrugreturns unamused face, thinking face, eyes,confused face, neutral face, tears of joy, and expressionless face ... but notthe shrugging emoji), not a fan of npm (has 1862 dependencies).https://github.com/Fingel/tuimoji
Grouping could be better, doesn't support emojis sequences, only interactiveTUI, feels kinda slow-ish especially when searching.
https://github.com/pemistahl/chr
Only deals with codepoints, not emojis.
gnome-characters
Uses Gnome interface/window decorations and won't work well with other WMs,doesn't deal with emoji sequences, I don't like the grouping/ordering it uses,requires two clicks to copy a character.
gucharmap
Doesn't display emojis, just unicode blocks.
KCharSelect
Many KDE-specific dependencies (106M). Didn't try it.
https://github.com/Mange/rofi-emoji andhttps://github.com/fdw/rofimoji
Both are pretty similar to the dmenu/rofi integration of uni with some minordifferences, and both seem to work well with no major issues.
gtk3 emoji picker (Ctrl+; or Ctrl+. in gtk 3.93 or newer)
Only works in GTK, doesn't work with
GTK_IM_MODULE=xim(needed for composekey), for some reasons the emojis look ugly, doesn't display emojis sequences,doesn't have a tooltip or other text description about what the emoji actuallyis, the variation selector doesn't seem to work (never displays skin tone?),doesn't work in Firefox.This is so broken on my system that it seems that I'm missing something forthis to work or something?
https://github.com/rugk/awesome-emoji-picker
Only works in Firefox; takes a tad too long to open; doesn't support skintones.
Some alternatives people have suggested that I haven't looked at; make an issueor email me if you know of any others.
- https://github.com/cassidyjames/ideogram
- https://github.com/OzymandiasTheGreat/emoji-keyboard
- https://github.com/salty-horse/ibus-uniemoji
- https://fcitx-im.org/wiki/Unicode
- http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/software/unicode/ andhttps://github.com/garabik/unicode (same?)
- https://billposer.org/Software/unidesc.html
- https://github.com/NoraCodes/charpicker (rofi)
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Query the Unicode database from the commandline, with good support for emojis