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textanalytics.unicode.nfc

Unicode composed normalized form (NFC)

Since R2022b

    Description

    example

    newStr = textanalytics.unicode.nfc(str) normalizes the string str to the Unicode canonical composition form (NFC).

    Examples

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    Strings that look identical can have different underlying representations. The Unicode canonical composition form (NFC) ensures that equivalent strings have a unique binary representation.

    Consider the string "jalapeño", where the character "ñ" is represented as the character "n" followed by the code unit "\x0303", which corresponds to the diacritic "~". On some systems, the character "ñ" appears as two characters. The string has length 9.

    str = compose("jalapen\x0303o")
    str = 
    "jalapeño"
    
    strlength(str)
    ans = 9
    

    Normalize the string using the textanalytics.unicode.nfc function. On some systems, the output string appears to be identical to the input string.

    newStr = textanalytics.unicode.nfc(str)
    newStr = 
    "jalapeño"
    

    View the length of the normalized string. The normalized representation includes one fewer code units. In this case, the function merges the letter "n" and the diacritic "~" into a single code unit that represents "ñ".

    strlength(newStr)
    ans = 8
    

    Extract the seventh code unit of the normalized string.

    extractBetween(newStr,7,7)
    ans = 
    "ñ"
    

    Check whether str and newStr are equal using the == operator. The operator returns 0 because the strings have different underlying representations.

    tf = str == newStr
    tf = logical
       0
    
    

    Input Arguments

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    Input text, specified as a string array, character vector, or cell array of character vectors.

    Example: ["An example of a short sentence."; "A second short sentence."]

    Data Types: string | char | cell

    Output Arguments

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    Output text, returned as a string array, character vector, or cell array of character vectors. str and newStr have the same data type.

    Algorithms

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    Unicode Normalization Forms

    For more information about Unicode normalization forms, see Unicode Standard Annex #15 Unicode Normalization Forms.

    References

    [1] Whistler, Ken, ed. "Unicode Standard Annex #15: Unicode Normalization Forms." Unicode Technical Reports, August 27, 2021. https://unicode.org/reports/tr15/.

    Version History

    Introduced in R2022b