Generate all Unicode characters

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created 2003 · complexity basic · author maxiangjiang · version 7.0

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You can generate a table of Unicode characters in Vim to see how they are displayed by your system. This may be of interest to anyone using CJK characters.

Example The following will add a table showing the characters from hex 9900 to 9fff, inclusive:

:call GenerateUnicode(0x9900, 0x9fff)

Screenshot

How to

For this to work, you will need:

:set guifont=*         "select a suitable font
:set encoding=utf-8    "set a suitable encoding
:set ambiwidth=double  "for CJK characters (probably not needed)

Copy the following into a file, then type :so % (source current file) to define the function. Enter :new and type :call GenerateUnicode(0x9900,0x9fff) (after setting the font and encoding).

function! GenerateUnicode(first, last)
  let i = a:first
  while i <= a:last
    if (i%256 == 0)
      $put ='----------------------------------------------------'
      $put ='     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F '
      $put ='----------------------------------------------------'
    endif
    let c = printf('%04X ', i)
    for j in range(16)
      let c = c . nr2char(i) . ' '
      let i += 1
    endfor
    $put =c
  endwhile
endfunction

See also

• Entering special characters
• List of Unicode characters (Wikipedia)
• Charts of Unicode characters (Unicode Consortium)