How to write a unicode symbol in lua

Question

How can I write a Unicode symbol in lua. For example I have to write symbol with 9658
when I write

string.char( 9658 );

I got an error.

Answer 1

Here is an encoder for Lua that takes a Unicode code point and produces a UTF-8 string for the corresponding character:

do
  local bytemarkers = { {0x7FF,192}, {0xFFFF,224}, {0x1FFFFF,240} }
  function utf8(decimal)
    if decimal<128 then return string.char(decimal) end
    local charbytes = {}
    for bytes,vals in ipairs(bytemarkers) do
      if decimal<=vals[1] then
        for b=bytes+1,2,-1 do
          local mod = decimal%64
          decimal = (decimal-mod)/64
          charbytes[b] = string.char(128+mod)
        end
        charbytes[1] = string.char(vals[2]+decimal)
        break
      end
    end
    return table.concat(charbytes)
  end
end

c=utf8(0x24)    print(c.." is "..#c.." bytes.") --> $ is 1 bytes.
c=utf8(0xA2)    print(c.." is "..#c.." bytes.") --> ¢ is 2 bytes.
c=utf8(0x20AC)  print(c.." is "..#c.." bytes.") --> € is 3 bytes.  
c=utf8(0x24B62) print(c.." is "..#c.." bytes.") -->                                                                     

                                                        
            

Answer 2

Lua does not look inside strings. So, you can just write

mychar = "►"

(added in 2015)

Lua 5.3 introduced support for UTF-8 escape sequences:

The UTF-8 encoding of a Unicode character can be inserted in a literal string with the escape sequence \u{XXX} (note the mandatory enclosing brackets), where XXX is a sequence of one or more hexadecimal digits representing the character code point.

You can also use utf8.char(9658).

Answer 3

To get broader support for Unicode string content, one approach is slnunicode which was developed as part of the Selene database library. It will give you a module that supports most of what the standard string library does, but with Unicode characters and UTF-8 encoding.

Answer 4

Maybe this can help you:

    function FromUTF8(pos)
  local mod = math.mod
  local function charat(p)
    local v = editor.CharAt[p]; if v < 0 then v = v + 256 end; return v
  end
  local v, c, n = 0, charat(pos), 1
  if c < 128 then v = c
  elseif c < 192 then
    error("Byte values between 0x80 to 0xBF cannot start a multibyte sequence")
  elseif c < 224 then v = mod(c, 32); n = 2
  elseif c < 240 then v = mod(c, 16); n = 3
  elseif c < 248 then v = mod(c,  8); n = 4
  elseif c < 252 then v = mod(c,  4); n = 5
  elseif c < 254 then v = mod(c,  2); n = 6
  else
    error("Byte values between 0xFE and OxFF cannot start a multibyte sequence")
  end
  for i = 2, n do
    pos = pos + 1; c = charat(pos)
    if c < 128 or c > 191 then
      error("Following bytes must have values between 0x80 and 0xBF")
    end
    v = v * 64 + mod(c, 64)
  end
  return v, pos, n
end