Unicode symbols and their ASCII equivalents
The following Unicode symbols can be used in Raku without needing to load any additional modules. Some of them have equivalents which can be typed with ASCII-only characters.
Reference is made below to various properties of unicode codepoints. The definitive list can be found here: https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/PropList.txt.
Any codepoint that has the Ll (Letter, lowercase), Lu (Letter, uppercase), Lt (Letter, titlecase), Lm (Letter, modifier), or the Lo (Letter, other) property can be used just like any other alphabetic character from the ASCII range.
my $Δ = 1;
$Δ++;
say $Δ;
Any codepoint that has the Nd (Number, decimal digit) property, can be used as a digit in any number. For example:
my $var = １９; # U+FF11 U+FF19
say $var + 2; # OUTPUT: «21»
Any codepoint that has the No (Number, other) or Nl (Number, letter) property can be used standalone as a numeric value, such as ½ and ⅓. (These aren't decimal digit characters, so can't be combined.) For example:
my $var = ⅒ + 2 + Ⅻ; # here ⅒ is No and Rat and Ⅻ is Nl and Int
say $var; # OUTPUT: «14.1»
Besides spaces and tabs, you can use any other unicode whitespace character that has the Zs (Separator, space), Zl (Separator, line), or Zp (Separator, paragraph) property.
See Wikipedia's Whitespace section for detailed tables of the Unicode codepoints with (or associated with) whitespace characteristics. This is an important section for Raku authors of digital typography modules for print or web use.
This list contains the single codepoints [and their ASCII equivalents] that have a special meaning in Raku.
| Symbol | Codepoint | ASCII | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| « | U+00AB | << | as part of «» or .« or regex left word boundary |
| » | U+00BB | >> | as part of «» or .» or regex right word boundary |
| × | U+00D7 | * | |
| ÷ | U+00F7 | / | |
| ≤ | U+2264 | <= | |
| ≥ | U+2265 | >= | |
| ≠ | U+2260 | != | |
| − | U+2212 | - | |
| ∘ | U+2218 | o | |
| ≅ | U+2245 | =~= | |
| π | U+03C0 | pi | 3.14159_26535_89793_238e0 |
| τ | U+03C4 | tau | 6.28318_53071_79586_476e0 |
| 𝑒 | U+1D452 | e | 2.71828_18284_59045_235e0 |
| ∞ | U+221E | Inf | |
| … | U+2026 | ... | |
| ‘ | U+2018 | ' | as part of ‘’ or ’‘ |
| ’ | U+2019 | ' | as part of ‘’ or ‚’ or ’‘ |
| ‚ | U+201A | ' | as part of ‚‘ or ‚’ |
| “ | U+201C | " | as part of “” or ”“ |
| ” | U+201D | " | as part of “” or ”“ or ”” |
| „ | U+201E | " | as part of „“ or „” |
| ｢ | U+FF62 | Q// | as part of ｢｣ (Note: Q// variant cannot be used bare in regexes) |
| ｣ | U+FF63 | Q// | as part of ｢｣ (Note: Q// variant cannot be used bare in regexes) |
| ⁺ | U+207A | \+ | (must use explicit number) as part of exponentiation |
| ⁻ | U+207B | - | (must use explicit number) as part of exponentiation |
| ¯ | U+00AF | - | (must use explicit number) as part of exponentiation (macron is an alternative way of writing a minus) |
| ⁰ | U+2070 | **0 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ¹ | U+00B9 | **1 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ² | U+00B2 | **2 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ³ | U+00B3 | **3 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ⁴ | U+2074 | **4 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ⁵ | U+2075 | **5 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ⁶ | U+2076 | **6 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ⁷ | U+2077 | **7 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ⁸ | U+2078 | **8 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ⁹ | U+2079 | **9 | can be combined with ⁰..⁹ |
| ∅ | U+2205 | set() | (empty set) |
| ∈ | U+2208 | (elem) | |
| ∉ | U+2209 | !(elem) | |
| ∋ | U+220B | (cont) | |
| ∌ | U+220C | !(cont) | |
| ≡ | U+2261 | (==) | |
| ≢ | U+2262 | !(==) | |
| ⊆ | U+2286 | (<=) | |
| ⊈ | U+2288 | !(<=) | |
| ⊂ | U+2282 | (<) | |
| ⊄ | U+2284 | !(<) | |
| ⊇ | U+2287 | (>=) | |
| ⊉ | U+2289 | !(>=) | |
| ⊃ | U+2283 | (>) | |
| ⊅ | U+2285 | !(>) | |
| ∪ | U+222A | (|) | |
| ∩ | U+2229 | (&) | |
| ∖ | U+2216 | (-) | |
| ⊖ | U+2296 | (^) | |
| ⊍ | U+228D | (.) | |
| ⊎ | U+228E | (+) |
The atomic operators have U+269B ⚛ ATOM SYMBOL incorporated into them. Their ASCII equivalents are ordinary subroutines, not operators:
my atomicint $x = 42;
$x⚛++; # Unicode version
atomic-fetch-inc($x); # ASCII version
The ASCII alternatives are as follows:
| Symbol | ASCII | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| ⚛= | atomic-assign | |
| ⚛ | atomic-fetch | this is the prefix:<⚛> operator |
| ⚛+= | atomic-add-fetch | |
| ⚛-= | atomic-sub-fetch | |
| ⚛−= | atomic-sub-fetch | this operator uses U+2212 minus sign |
| ++⚛ | atomic-inc-fetch | |
| ⚛++ | atomic-fetch-inc | |
| --⚛ | atomic-dec-fetch | |
| ⚛-- | atomic-fetch-dec |
This list contains multiple-codepoint operators that require special composition for their ASCII equivalents. Note the codepoints are shown space-separated but should be entered as adjacent codepoints when used.
| Symbol | Codepoints | ASCII | Since | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| »=» | U+00BB = U+00BB | >>[=]>> | v6.c | uses ASCII '=' |
| «=« | U+00AB = U+00AB | <<[=]<< | v6.c | uses ASCII '=' |
| «=» | U+00AB = U+00BB | <<[=]>> | v6.c | uses ASCII '=' |
| »=« | U+00BB = U+00AB | >>[=]<< | v6.c | uses ASCII '=' |