This file is in UTF-8 encoding. To use unicode utility, you need: - python >=2.6 (str format() method is needed), preferrably wide unicode build, however, python3 is recommended - python optparse library (part of since python2.3) - UnicodeData.txt file (http://www.unicode.org/Public) which you should put into /usr/share/unicode/, ~/.unicode/ or current working directory. - apt-get install unicode-data # Debian - dnf install unicode-ucd # Fedora - if you want to see Unicode block information, you also need Blocks.txt file, which you should put into /usr/share/unicode/, ~/.unicode/ or current working directory. - if you want to see UniHan properties, you need also Unihan.txt file which should be put into /usr/share/unicode/, ~/.unicode/ or current working directory. Enter regular expression, hexadecimal number or some characters as an argument. unicode will try to guess what you want to look up, see the manpage if you want to force other behaviour (the manpage is also the best documentation). In particular, -r forces searching for regular expression in the names of characters, -s forces unicode to display information about the characters given. Here are just some examples: $ unicode.py euro U+20A0 EURO-CURRENCY SIGN UTF-8: e2 82 a0 UTF-16BE: 20a0 Decimal: ₠ ₠ Category: Sc (Symbol, Currency) Bidi: ET (European Number Terminator) U+20AC EURO SIGN UTF-8: e2 82 ac UTF-16BE: 20ac Decimal: € € Category: Sc (Symbol, Currency) Bidi: ET (European Number Terminator) $ unicode.py 00c0 U+00C0 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE UTF-8: c3 80 UTF-16BE: 00c0 Decimal: À À (à) Lowercase: U+00E0 Category: Lu (Letter, Uppercase) Bidi: L (Left-to-Right) Decomposition: 0041 0300 You can specify a range of characters as arguments, 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, armenian 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 U+010C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CARON UTF-8: c4 8c UTF-16BE: 010c Decimal: Č Č (Č) Uppercase: U+010C Category: Lu (Letter, Uppercase) Bidi: L (Left-to-Right) Decomposition: 0043 030C Multibyte encodings are supported: $ unicode --fromcp big5 -x aff3 and multi-char strings are supported, too: $ unicode --fromcp utf-8 -x c599c3adc5a5 On format (--format='...'): Format string tells unicode which information should be displayed. There is one (and only one) escape character recognised, \n for a new line. You can use standard python .format() syntax. Following variables are recognized: {black} {red} {green} {yellow} {blue} {magenta} {cyan} {white} -- ANSI colours (foreground) {on_black} {on_red} ... -- ANSI colours (background) {no_colour} {default} {bold} {underline} {blink} {reverse} {concealed} -- self-explaining ANSI escape codes {ordc} -- unicode codepoint of the character (integer) {name} -- unicode name of the character {utf8} -- utf8 representation of the character (hexadecimal) {utf16be} -- utf16 representation of the character (hexadecimal) {decimal} -- decimal representation of the character {opt_additional} -- optional representation in additional charset (-c); empty string if not specified {pchar} -- the character itself {opt_flipcase} -- upper- or lowercase opposite of the character, in parentheses; empty if character is not cased {opt_uppercase}{opt_lowercase} -- optional string describing uppercase or lowercase variant of the character; empty if character is not cased {category} {category_desc} -- character category and its human readable description {opt_numeric}{numeric_desc} -- the string `Numeric value:' and the numeric value of the character; both empty if the character has no numeric value {opt_digit}{digit_desc} -- the string `Digit value:' and the digit value of the character; both empty if the character has no digit value {opt_bidi}{bidi}{bidi_desc} -- the string `Bidi:', the bidi property and a human readable description of the bidi property; empty if the character has no bidi category {mirrored_desc} -- the string 'Character is mirrored' if the character is mirrored, empty otherwise {opt_combining}{combining_desc} -- the string `Combining: ', combining class and a human readable description of the combining class; empty if the character is not combining {opt_decomp}{decomp_desc} -- the string `Decomposition: ' and a hexadecimal sequence of decomposition characters; empty if the character has no decomposition {opt_unicode_block}{opt_unicode_block_desc} -- the string `Unicode block:', range of the unicode block and description of said unicode block for the given character {opt_eaw}{eaw_desc} -- the string `East Asian width:' and the human readable value of East Asian width