R – Need a simple tool for analysing unicode characters

characteridentifyspecial characterstext;unicode

I'm surprised I can't find a simple tool for this. Basically, sometimes as a result of text munging, or using some piece of software, I end up with some text that has some troublesome characters – such as looking a lot like other characters, but being distinct from them. I'd like a tool (preferably online, javascript based) where I can paste the text, and it will tell me all the characters involved, their names, unicode codes etc.

Best Answer

Try Unicode Character Search

Edit: Sorry, missed the part where you wanted to search multiple characters at a time. Try this: http://rishida.net/tools/conversion/

This might also be what you're looking for: http://rishida.net/scripts/uniview/uniview.php

XML escape characters

There are only five:

"   &quot;
'   &apos;
<   &lt;
>   &gt;
&   &amp;

Escaping characters depends on where the special character is used.

The examples can be validated at the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Text

The safe way is to escape all five characters in text. However, the three characters ", ' and > needn't be escaped in text:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>"'></valid>

Attributes

The safe way is to escape all five characters in attributes. However, the > character needn't be escaped in attributes:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute=">"/>

The ' character needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ":

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute="'"/>

Likewise, the " needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ':

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute='"'/>

Comments

All five special characters must not be escaped in comments:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<!-- "'<>& -->
</valid>

CDATA

All five special characters must not be escaped in CDATA sections:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<![CDATA["'<>&]]>
</valid>

Processing instructions

All five special characters must not be escaped in XML processing instructions:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?process <"'&> ?>
<valid/>

XML vs. HTML

HTML has its own set of escape codes which cover a lot more characters.

Best Answer

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