How do I encode Unicode character codes in a PowerShell string literal? - powershell

Question

How can I encode the Unicode character U+0048 (H), say, in a PowerShell string?
In C# I would just do this: "\u0048", but that doesn't appear to work in PowerShell.

Answer 1

Replace '\u' with '0x' and cast it to System.Char:
PS > [char]0x0048
H
You can also use the "$()" syntax to embed a Unicode character into a string:
PS > "Acme$([char]0x2122) Company"
AcmeT Company
Where T is PowerShell's representation of the character for non-registered trademarks.
Note: this method works only for characters in Plane 0, the BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane), chars < U+10000.

Answer 2

According to the documentation, PowerShell Core 6.0 adds support with this escape sequence:
PS> "`u{0048}"
H
see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_special_characters?view=powershell-6#unicode-character-ux

Answer 3

Maybe this isn't the PowerShell way, but this is what I do. I find it to be cleaner.
[regex]::Unescape("\u0048") # Prints H
[regex]::Unescape("\u0048ello") # Prints Hello

Answer 4

For those of us still on 5.1 and wanting to use the higher-order Unicode charset (for which none of these answers work) I made this function so you can simply build strings like so:
'this is my favourite park ',0x1F3DE,'. It is pretty sweet ',0x1F60A | Unicode
#takes in a stream of strings and integers,
#where integers are unicode codepoints,
#and concatenates these into valid UTF16
Function Unicode {
Begin {
$output=[System.Text.StringBuilder]::new()
}
Process {
$output.Append($(
if ($_ -is [int]) { [char]::ConvertFromUtf32($_) }
else { [string]$_ }
)) | Out-Null
}
End { $output.ToString() }
}
Note that getting these to display in your console is a whole other problem, but if you're outputting to an Outlook email or a Gridview (below) it will just work (as utf16 is native for .NET interfaces).
This also means you can also output plain control (not necessarily unicode) characters pretty easily if you're more comfortable with decimal since you dont actually need to use the 0x (hex) syntax to make the integers. 'hello',32,'there' | Unicode would put a non-breaking space betwixt the two words, the same as if you did 0x20 instead.

Answer 5

Another way using PowerShell.
$Heart = $([char]0x2665)
$Diamond = $([char]0x2666)
$Club = $([char]0x2663)
$Spade = $([char]0x2660)
Write-Host $Heart -BackgroundColor Yellow -ForegroundColor Magenta
Use the command help Write-Host -Full to read all about it.

Answer 6

To make it work for characters outside the BMP you need to use Char.ConvertFromUtf32()
'this is my favourite park ' + [char]::ConvertFromUtf32(0x1F3DE) +
'. It is pretty sweet ' + [char]::ConvertFromUtf32(0x1F60A)

Answer 7

Note that some characters like 🌎 might need a "double rune" to be printed:
PS> "C:\foo\bar\$([char]0xd83c)$([char]0xdf0e)something.txt"
Will print:
C:\foo\bar\🌎something.txt
You can find these "runes" here, in the "unicode escape" row:
https://dencode.com/string