unicode-show
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Detect and annotate non-ASCII or suspicious Unicode characters in text or files.
SYNOPSIS[edit]
unicode-show [FILE]...
DESCRIPTION[edit]
unicode-show is a utility that reads text input (from standard input or files) and highlights suspicious Unicode characters, such as those outside the safe ASCII range. This tool is useful for identifying potentially malicious or misleading Unicode characters in source code, logs, or user input.
For each suspicious character, unicode-show prints:
- The line it appears on, annotated with
[U+XXXX]markers - A description including the character (if visible), Unicode codepoint, character name, and category
What is considered suspicious:
- Characters outside the printable ASCII range (
0x20–0x7E) - Control characters (excluding
\n,\r,\t) - Any character not in the standard set of ASCII letters, digits, punctuation, and trailing whitespace
Output formatting:
- Annotations are colorized using ANSI escape codes if stdout is a terminal and the environment is color-friendly
- Red for inline
[U+XXXX]markers - Cyan for character metadata descriptions
COLOR OUTPUT DISABLED IF[edit]
- The environment variable
NOCOLORis set TERMis set todumb- Output is redirected (non-interactive terminal)
OPTIONS[edit]
This tool takes no options. Any arguments are treated as file paths. If no arguments are given, input is read from standard input.
EXIT STATUS[edit]
0No suspicious Unicode characters found1Suspicious characters were detected2An error occurred (e.g., file I/O or decoding failure)
EXAMPLES[edit]
Scan a file for suspicious characters:
unicode-show suspicious.txt
Scan multiple files:
unicode-show file1.txt file2.md
Scan input from a pipeline:
cat file1.txt
Disable color output:
NOCOLOR=1 unicode-show example.txt
ENVIRONMENT[edit]
NOCOLOR- disables color output if setTERM- if set todumb, disables color output
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