Mastodawn

Dan 🌈Feb 18, 2025

Today I learned that there is a specific #unicode "record separator" symbol, formally known as "U+001E Information Separator Two".

https://codepoints.net/U+001E

It is meant to be used to indicate a separation between two units of information. An example of where this could be used is in a separated-value file, e.g. a CSV, but using this symbol instead of a comma.

This is interesting because there are vanishingly few instances where the record separator symbol would appear in most contexts, but many instances where a comma appears. Using this symbol instead of a comma (or a semi-colon, or an exclamation point, or any one of the usual separators) could make some data hygiene scenarios much more straightforward.

U+001E INFORMATION SEPARATOR TWO*: ␞ – Unicode

␞, codepoint U+001E INFORMATION SEPARATOR TWO* in Unicode, is located in the block “Basic Latin”. It belongs to the Common script and is a Control.

Codepoints.net

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Kornelis Feb 19, 2025

@phrawzty I’m a lay person, but I still want to code sometimes. I like separators that are always visible. Perhaps that is naive. Anyway, I can see RS in vim as ^^, but I’m not sure that uniquely identifies RS. When I test RS in the fonts on my system, half display it as white space, the other half tell me RS does not exist. Not sure what that means.

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Dan 🌈

@kornelis Font support is a whole thing, for sure. As is whatever underlying structure is interpreting, storing, and rendering the symbols. For example, when I try to paste the symbol into the web interface of mastodon (i.e. right now), it pastes as a unicode box, but the stored and/or rendered result just omits it entirely.

fun!