Cha(rs)

Use this tool to display names and codes for various ASCII (and unicode) characters / code points!

It's strongly inspired by ascii(1), but supports unicode characters; it's also inspired by unicode.py, but it attempts to support whitespace/control characters better.

Cha(rs) is currently probably failing at some other edge case, but I hope not.

Pronunciation

How do you pronounce "chars"? This is a contentious thing.

Installation

Prereqs: Travis CI builds chars on Rust 1.26, current stable, beta and nightly. Versions prior to 1.26 are not supported.

Plain crate installation without source code

cargo install chars --git https://github.com/antifuchs/chars.git

OS packages

Arch linux: There's an AUR package for chars.

Source installation

1. Clone this repo
2. cargo install

Running

Look up a character by its face value:

chars 'ß'

Screenshot:

LATIN1 df, 223, 0xdf, 0337, bits 11011111
Width: 1 (2 in CJK context), prints as ß
Lower case. Upcases to SS
Quotes as \u{df}
Unicode name: LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S

Look up a character by its unicode point:

chars U+1F63C

Screenshot:

U+0001F63C, 😼 0x0001F63C, \0373074, UTF-8: f0 9f 98 bc, UTF-16BE: d83dde3c
Width: 1, prints as 😼
Quotes as \u{1f63c}
Unicode name: CAT FACE WITH WRY SMILE

Look up a character by ambiguous "char code" handwaving:

chars 10

Screenshot:

U+0001F0EA, 🃪 0x0001F0EA, \0370352, UTF-8: f0 9f 83 aa, UTF-16BE: d83cdcea
Width: 1, prints as 🃪
Quotes as \u{1f0ea}
Unicode name: PLAYING CARD TRUMP-10

U+0001DAA9, 𝪩 0x0001DAA9, \0355251, UTF-8: f0 9d aa a9, UTF-16BE: d836dea9
Width: 0, prints as 𝪩
Quotes as \u{1daa9}
Unicode name: SIGNWRITING ROTATION MODIFIER-10

U+0001D209, 𝈉 0x0001D209, \0351011, UTF-8: f0 9d 88 89, UTF-16BE: d834de09
Width: 1, prints as 𝈉
Quotes as \u{1d209}
Unicode name: GREEK VOCAL NOTATION SYMBOL-10

U+0001D1A4, 𝆤 0x0001D1A4, \0350644, UTF-8: f0 9d 86 a4, UTF-16BE: d834dda4
Width: 1, prints as 𝆤
Quotes as \u{1d1a4}
Unicode name: MUSICAL SYMBOL ORNAMENT STROKE-10

U+FE09, ︉ 0xFE09, \0177011, UTF-8: ef b8 89, UTF-16BE: fe09
Width: 0, prints as ︉
Quotes as \u{fe09}
Unicode name: VARIATION SELECTOR-10

ASCII 1/0,  16, 0x10, 0020, bits 00010000
Control character; quotes as \u{10}, called ^P
Called: DLE
Also known as: Data Link Escape

ASCII 0/a,  10, 0x0a, 0012, bits 00001010
Control character; quotes as \n, called ^J
Called: LF, NL
Also known as: Line Feed, Newline, \n

ASCII 0/8,   8, 0x08, 0010, bits 00001000
Control character; quotes as \u{8}, called ^H
Called: BS
Also known as: Backspace, \b

ASCII 0/2,   2, 0x02, 0002, bits 00000010
Control character; quotes as \u{2}, called ^B
Called: STX
Also known as: Start of Text

Look a control character:

chars "^C"

Screenshot:

ASCII 0/3,   3, 0x03, 0003, bits 00000011
Control character; quotes as \u{3}, called ^C
Called: ETX
Also known as: End of Text