NAME

uniname - Name the characters in a Unicode text file

SYNOPSIS

uniname ([option flags]) (<file name>)

If no input file name is supplied, uniname reads from the standard input.

DESCRIPTION

uniname names the characters in a Unicode text file. For each character, uniname defaults to printing the character offset, the byte offset, the hexadecimal UTF-32 character code, the encoding as a sequence of hex byte values, the glyph, and the character's Unicode name. Command line flags allow undesired information to be suppressed. Glyphs that do not display nicely, such as control characters and spaces, are not displayed. For the Latin-1 control characters, whose official Unicode name is "control", the real name is given. Character and byte offsets both start from 0.

Where a character does not have a unique Unicode name, as is the case with Chinese characters, the character is identified as "character in such-and-such a range". However, if the character is a Chinese character listed in Nelson's dictionary, the Nelson number is supplied.

By default, input is expected to be UTF-8. Native order UTF-32 may be specified via the command line flag If invalid UTF8 is encountered, an explanation is printed as to why it is invalid. -q.

COMMAND LINE FLAGS

-A: Skip ASCII whitespace characters.
-a: Skip ASCII characters.
-B: Skip characters within the Basic Multilingual Plane.
-b: Suppress printing of byte offset.
-c: Suppress printing of character offset.
-e: Suppress printing of encoding.
-g: Suppress printing of glyph.
-h: Print usage information.
-l: Print line number.
-n: Suppress printing of Unicode name.
-p: Suppress printing of headers every screenfull.
-q: Input is native order UTF-32.
-r: Print Unicode range. The ranges reported include both official Unicode ranges and the constructed language ranges within the Private Use Areas registered with the Conscript Unicode Registry (http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/).
-s <character offset>: Skip to specified character offset.
-S <byte offset>: Skip to specified byte offset. Note that even if the file consists of well-formed Unicode there is no guarantee that the byte sequence beginning at an arbitrary byte will be valid Unicode. This option is provided for use where other programs generate only byte offsets or where it is necessary to skip over damaged Unicode. In most circumstances use of a character offset will be more apprpriate. If a byte offset is used, the character offsets shown are with respect to the beginning of the section of the file examined rather than the beginning of the file.
-u: Suppress printing of UTF32 code.
-V: Validate the input. In this case, nothing is done other than determine whether the input is valid UTF-8 Unicode. If it is, no output is produced and the program exits with status 0. If invalid UTF-8 is encountered, the program reports the location of the first invalid UTF-8 encountered, explains why it is invalid, and exits with status 1.
-v: Print version information.

REFERENCES

Unicode Standard, version 5.1

AUTHOR

Bill Poser
billposer@alum.mit.edu

LICENSE

GNU General Public License