Unicode in JavaScript

This article helps you to understand the insertion of Unicode characters into JavaScript.

Unicode in JavaScript

According to the ES2015 specification, source code text is represented using Unicode (version 5.1 and above). The source text consists of code points ranging from U+0000 to U+10FFFF.

How source code is saved or exchanged is unimportant to the ECMAScript standard; however, it is often encoded as UTF-8.

There are two ways to insert the Unicode characters in JavaScript; using Unicode escape sequence and String.fromCodePoint.

Unicode Escape Sequence

String escape sequences convey code units based on code point numbers.

3 escape types in JavaScript:

1. Hexadecimal escape
2. Unicode escape
3. Code point escape

To insert Omega, you can escape a Unicode code point using the Unicode escape sequence \u{XXXXXX} (where X denotes 1-6 hexadecimal digits in the range of U+0000 to U+10FFFF, which covers the full Unicode).

For example, to insert Omega, i.e.,(U+03A9) into a JavaScript string, you can do it in the following way.

const ome = 'Omega: \u{03A9}';
console.log(ome);

Run Code

Output:

"Omega: Ω"

Unicode has grown to contain additional characters not included in the BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane). These characters are represented by surrogate pairs, code points that cannot be added directly in previous versions of JavaScript.

Two adjoined Unicode escape sequences would be required to represent such characters appropriately.

Use String.fromCodePoint() in JavaScript

Using the String.fromCodePoint() function, you may add a Unicode code point to a JavaScript string. It takes a series of code points (decimal, hexadecimal, octal, etc.) as an input.

For example, use the decimal code point to display Omega.

const omee = `Omega: ${String.fromCodePoint(937)}`;
console.log(omee);

Run Code

Output:

"Omega: Ω"