String.prototype.normalize for safer string comparison (#tilPost)

Today I came a across the String.prototype.normalize function which I haven’t used before. It exists to make string comparisons more reliable.
Let’s me show you a quick example:
// pick a random word with a German Umlaut
const word …

Today I came a across the String.prototype.normalize function which I haven’t used before. It exists to make string comparisons more reliable.

Let’s me show you a quick example:

// pick a random word with a German Umlaut
const word = 'über';         // displayed as 'über'
console.log( word.length );  // 4

const alikeWord = 'u\u0308ber';  // displayed as 'über'
console.log( alikeWord.length ); // 5

console.log( word === alikeWord ); // false

As you see strings that look completely identical to us doesn’t have to be the same internally. The string alikeWord makes use of a Combining Diacritical Mark to generate the German Umlaut ü – to be specific it uses COMBINING DIAERESIS. The thing is that ü also has its own codepoint in Unicode. Now we have two ways to display this glyph which makes comparison a bit tricky.

To solve this issue we can use normalize to well… yeah normalize strings. 😉

const word = 'über';         // displayed as 'über'
console.log( word.length );  // 4

const alikeWord = 'u\u0308ber'.normalize(); // displayed as 'über'
console.log( alikeWord.length );            // 4

console.log( word === alikeWord ); // true


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» String.prototype.normalize for safer string comparison (#tilPost) | Stefan Judis | Sciencx | https://www.scien.cx/2017/04/16/string-prototype-normalize-for-safer-string-comparison-tilpost/ | 2024-03-28T16:52:12+00:00
https://github.com/addpipe/simple-recorderjs-demo