new post: Unicode codepoints in ruby

_posts/2013-11-06-unicode-codepoints-in-ruby.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Unicode codepoints in ruby
+date: 06.11.2013 12:04
+---
+Another post of the category "better write it down before you forget it".
+
+I ❤ Unicode. Atleast most of the time. That's why I have things like ✓, ✗ and
+ツ mapped directly on my keyboard.
+
+But sometimes you need not only the symbol itself, but maybe the codepoint as well. That's easy in ruby:
+
+    irb> "❤".codepoints
+    => [10084]
+
+Got some codepoints and need to map it back to it's symbol? Easy:
+
+    irb> [10084, 10003].pack("U*")
+    => "❤✓"
+
+Oh, of course the usual `\uXYZ` syntax works aswell, but you need the hexstring for that:
+
+    irb> 10084.to_s 16
+    => "2764"
+    irb> "\u{2764}"
+    => "❤"
+
+Sometimes you may need to see the actual bytes. This is easy in ruby aswell:
+
+    irb> "❤".bytes
+    => [226, 157, 164]
+
+There is documentation on these things:
+
+* [each_codepoint][]
+* [codepoints][]
+* [bytes][]
+
+Enjoy the world of unicode! [❤][unicode-heart]
+
+[each_codepoint]: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-2.0.0/String.html#method-i-each_codepoint
+[codepoints]: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-2.0.0/String.html#method-i-codepoints
+[bytes]: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-2.0.0/String.html#method-i-bytes
+[unicode-heart]: http://codepoints.net/U+2764