---
name: "unicode"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "unicode"
version: "3.2-1"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/unicode"
---

# unicode(1)

command line unicode database query tool

## NAME

unicode - command line unicode database query tool

## SYNOPSIS

**unicode** \[*options*\] string

## DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents the **unicode** command.

**unicode** is a command line unicode database query tool.

## OPTIONS

- **-h**

  **--help**

  Show help and exit.

- **-x**

  **--hexadecimal**

  Assume *string* to be a hexadecimal number

- **-d**

  **--decimal**

  Assume *string* to be a decimal number

- **-o**

  **--octal**

  Assume *string* to be an octal number

- **-b**

  **--binary**

  Assume *string* to be a binary number

- **-r**

  **--regexp**

  Assume *string* to be a Python regular expression

- **-s**

  **--string**

  Assume *string* to be a sequence of characters

- **-a**

  **--auto**

  Try to guess type of *string* from one of the above (default)

- **-f***FILE*

  **--input\_file=***FILE*

  Read characters from FILE and display information about each of them. Use - to read from standard input.

- **-m***MAXCOUNT*

  **--max=***MAXCOUNT*

  Maximal number of codepoints to display, default: 20; use 0 for unlimited

- **-i***CHARSET*

  **--io=***IOCHARSET*

  I/O character set. For maximal pleasure, run **unicode** on UTF-8 capable terminal and specify IOCHARSET to be UTF-8. **unicode** tries to guess this value from your locale, so with properly set up locale, you should not need to specify it.

- **--fcp=***CHARSET*

  **--fromcp=***CHARSET*

  Convert numerical arguments from this encoding, default: no conversion. Multibyte encodings are supported. This is ignored for non-numerical arguments.

- **-c***ADDCHARSET*

  **--charset-add=***ADDCHARSET*

  Show hexadecimal reprezentation of displayed characters in this additional charset.

- **-C***USE\_COLOUR*

  **--colour=***USE\_COLOUR*

  USE\_COLOUR is one of **on** **off** **auto**

  **--colour=on** will use ANSI colour codes to colourise the output

  **--colour=off** won't use colours.

  **--colour=auto** will test if standard output is a tty, and use colours only when it is.

  **--color** is a synonym of **--colour**

- **-v**

  **--verbose**

  Be more verbose about displayed characters, e.g. display Unihan information, if available.

- **-w**

  **--wikipedia**

  Spawn browser pointing to English Wikipedia entry about the character.

- **--wt**

  **--wiktionary**

  Spawn browser pointing to English Wiktionary entry about the character.

- **--brief**

  Display character information in brief format

- **--format=***fmt*

  Use your own format for character information display. See the README for details.

- **--list**

  List (approximately) all known encodings.

- **--download**

  Try to download UnicodeData.txt into ~/.unicode/

- **--ascii**

  Display ASCII table

- **--brexit-ascii**

  **--brexit**

  Display ASCII table (EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement 2020 version)

## USAGE

**unicode** tries to guess the type of an argument. In particular, if the arguments looks like a valid hexadecimal representation of a Unicode codepoint, it will be considered to be such. Using

**unicode** face

will display information about U+FACE CJK COMPATIBILITY IDEOGRAPH-FACE, and it will not search for 'face' in character descriptions - for the latter, use:

**unicode** -r face

For example, you can use any of the following to display information about  U+00E1 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE (á):

**unicode** 00E1

**unicode** U+00E1

**unicode** á

**unicode** 'latin small letter a with acute'

You can specify a range of characters as argumets, **unicode** will show these characters in nice tabular format, aligned to 256-byte boundaries. Use two dots ".." to indicate the range, e.g.

**unicode** 0450..0520

will display the whole cyrillic and hebrew blocks (characters from U+0400 to U+05FF)

**unicode** 0400..

will display just characters from U+0400 up to U+04FF

Use --fromcp to query codepoints from other encodings:

**unicode** --fromcp cp1250 -d 200

Multibyte encodings are supported: **unicode** --fromcp big5 -x aff3

and multi-char strings are supported, too:

**unicode** --fromcp utf-8 -x c599c3adc5a5

## BUGS

Tabular format does not deal well with full-width, combining, control and RTL characters.

## SEE ALSO

[ascii(1)](/ascii/1.md)

## AUTHOR

Radovan Garabík \<garabik @ kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk\>