| # printable-characters |
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| [](https://travis-ci.org/xpl/printable-characters) [](https://coveralls.io/github/xpl/printable-characters) [](https://npmjs.com/package/printable-characters) [](https://scrutinizer-ci.com/g/xpl/printable-characters/?branch=master) [](https://david-dm.org/xpl/printable-characters) |
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| A little helper for handling strings containing zero width characters, ANSI styling, whitespaces, newlines, [weird Unicode 💩 symbols](http://blog.jonnew.com/posts/poo-dot-length-equals-two), etc. |
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| ## Determining the real (visible) length of a string |
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| ```javascript |
| const { strlen } = require ('printable-characters') |
| |
| strlen ('foo bar') // === 7 |
| strlen ('\u001b[106mfoo bar\u001b[49m') // === 7 |
| ``` |
|
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| ## Detecting blank text |
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| ```javascript |
| const { isBlank } = require ('printable-characters') |
| |
| isBlank ('foobar') // === false |
| isBlank ('\u001b[106m \t \t \n \u001b[49m') // === true |
| ``` |
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| ## Obtaining a blank string of the same width |
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| ```javascript |
| const { blank } = require ('printable-characters') |
| |
| blank ('💩') // === ' ' |
| blank ('foo') // === ' ' |
| blank ('\tfoo \nfoo') // === '\t \n ' |
| blank ('\u001b[22m\u001b[1mfoo \t\u001b[39m\u001b[22m')) // === ' \t' |
| ``` |
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| ## Matching invisible characters |
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| ```javascript |
| const { ansiEscapeCodes, zeroWidthCharacters } = require ('printable-characters') |
| |
| const s = '\u001b[106m' + 'foo' + '\n' + 'bar' + '\u001b[49m' |
| |
| s.replace (ansiEscapeCodes, '') // === 'foo\nbar' |
| .replace (zeroWidthCharacters, '') // === 'foobar' |
| ``` |
|
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| ## Getting the first N visible symbols, preserving the invisible parts |
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| Use for safely truncating strings to maximum width without breaking ANSI codes: |
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| ```javascript |
| const { first } = require ('printable-characters') |
| |
| const s = '\u001b[22mfoobar\u001b[22m' |
| |
| first (s, 0) // === '\u001b[22m\u001b[22m' |
| first (s, 1) // === '\u001b[22mf\u001b[22m' |
| first (s, 3) // === '\u001b[22mfoo\u001b[22m' |
| first (s, 6) // === '\u001b[22mfoobar\u001b[22m' |
| ``` |
|
|
| ## Extracting the invisible parts followed by the visible ones (parsing) |
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| ```javascript |
| const { partition } = require ('printable-characters') |
| |
| partition ('') // [ ]) |
| partition ('foo') // [['', 'foo'] ]) |
| partition ('\u001b[1mfoo') // [['\u001b[1m', 'foo'] ]) |
| partition ('\u001b[1mfoo\u0000bar') // [['\u001b[1m', 'foo'], ['\u0000', 'bar'] ]) |
| partition ('\u001b[1mfoo\u0000bar\n') // [['\u001b[1m', 'foo'], ['\u0000', 'bar'], ['\n', '']]) |
| ``` |
|
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| ## Applications |
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| - [as-table](https://github.com/xpl/as-table) — a simple function that prints objects as ASCII tables |
| - [string.bullet](https://github.com/xpl/string.bullet) — ASCII-mode bulleting for the list-style data |
| - [string.ify](https://github.com/xpl/string.ify) — a fancy pretty printer for the JavaScript entities |
| - [Ololog!](https://github.com/xpl/ololog) — a better `console.log` for the log-driven debugging junkies! |
|
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| ## TODO |
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| Handle multi-component emojis, as in [this article](http://blog.jonnew.com/posts/poo-dot-length-equals-two): |
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| ```javascript |
| assert.equal (strlen ('👩❤️💋👩'), 1) // FAILING, see http://blog.jonnew.com/posts/poo-dot-length-equals-two for possible solution |
| assert.equal (blank ('👩❤️💋👩'), ' ') // FAILING, see http://blog.jonnew.com/posts/poo-dot-length-equals-two for possible solution |
| ``` |
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