Unicode character lookup — name, code point, UTF-8 and escapes

How to use the Unicode character lookup

1. Type or paste into Character, code point or name. For example 😀, U+1F600, 1F600, #128512 or snowman.
2. For one character you get a list: Character, Code point, Name, Category, Script, Block, Decimal, UTF-8 bytes, UTF-16 units, HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
3. Paste a word or several codes and you get a table instead, one row per code point, which you can download as unicode.csv.
4. A name search lists up to 40 matches from the built-in name table.

What it does and when to use it

Use it when a character is causing trouble or when you need to write it in code. Typical cases: a string looks empty but is not, a search fails because a “space” is really a no-break space, you need the CSS escape for an icon, or you want to know whether an emoji will fit in a byte-limited field.

Pasting a whole word shows how it is built. “नमस्ते” turns into six rows, including two non-spacing marks (category Mn), which explains why its length in code is 6 and not 3.

For whole strings rather than single characters, the Unicode encoder writes every character as an escape, and the Unicode decoder turns escapes back into text. To see raw bytes of a longer text, use the hex dump viewer.

How it works

The lookup runs entirely in your browser.

• Category and script come from your browser’s built-in Unicode data, through regular expressions such as \p{gc=Lu} and \p{Script=Latin}. A script outside the 37 listed ones shows as Other.
• Block comes from a built-in table of about 100 common blocks.
• UTF-8 and UTF-16 are computed from the code point. Characters above U+FFFF use two UTF-16 units, a surrogate pair.
• HTML shows the named entity when one exists, plus the decimal reference; otherwise decimal and hex references.

Worked examples

U+1F600  →  Name: GRINNING FACE · Block: Emoticons · UTF-8 bytes: F0 9F 98 80
            UTF-16 units: D83D DE00 · JavaScript: \uD83D\uDE00  or  \u{1F600}
é        →  Name: LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE · Category: Lowercase letter (Ll)
            UTF-8 bytes: C3 A9 · HTML: é / é
#8364    →  Name: EURO SIGN · UTF-8 bytes: E2 82 AC · HTML: € / €
arrow    →  ← U+2190, ↑ U+2191, → U+2192, ↓ U+2193 (from the name table)

Limits and tips

• One to three plain digits are read as decimal, so 65 is “A”. Four to six digits are read as hex, so 1234 is U+1234. Add # for decimal or U+ for hex to be sure.
• A pasted string is limited to its first 200 characters.
• Name search covers the built-in table only. If a name finds nothing, paste the character itself.