CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptjsonunicodeunicode-escapes
Cibo FATA8
Cibo FATA8

Reputation: 101

JavaScript Unicode standard format

Is there any standard on how to write Unicode characters in JavaScript/JSON? For instance, is there any difference between \u011b and \u011B? Most of the web examples use second format. Also, there is an option for ASCII characters to be written in a short format like \xe1. Which format is preferable (standard). Is it good practice to mix these formats together and what about performance?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 223

Answers (1)

Giacomo Catenazzi
Giacomo Catenazzi

Reputation: 9523

For the first question: both version are valid. It is more a coding convention, you should prefer what convention is already used in your files/project. Then check on your community (convention used by other programs you heavily use, what they prefer, and as last option you can choose one way. But in any case, keep consistent.

Personally I prefer none of them for code: UTF-8 is so wide used and browsers should understand it, so I would put directly the right character (as character, not as escape sequence). If codepoint is important, I would add it into a comment. it is expected that all developers and tools will have UTF-8 editors.

Javascript uses UCS-2, so the precursor of UTF-16, but considering unicode code points to be just 16bit length (so some emoji would use two characters).

The byte format should not be used for text: it hides the meaning. There are exceptions: e.g. to check which encoding you get from user, or if you have BOM. [But so just for signatures]. For other binary cases, it is ok to use \x1e escapes, e.g. for key identification.

Note: you should really follow one coding guidelines. Google for it and you will find many, e.g. this from Google (which is maybe too much): https://google.github.io/styleguide/jsguide.html

Upvotes: 1

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