Search for Unicode character names using regular expressions.

Demo/scripts/find-uname.py

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+#!/usr/bin/env python
+
+"""
+For each argument on the command line, look for it in the set of all Unicode
+names.  Arguments are treated as case-insensitive regular expressions, e.g.:
+
+    % find-uname 'small letter a$' 'horizontal line'
+    *** small letter a$ matches ***
+    LATIN SMALL LETTER A (97)
+    COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER A (867)
+    CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A (1072)
+    PARENTHESIZED LATIN SMALL LETTER A (9372)
+    CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER A (9424)
+    FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER A (65345)
+    *** horizontal line matches ***
+    HORIZONTAL LINE EXTENSION (9135)
+"""
+
+import unicodedata
+import sys
+import re
+
+def main(args):
+    unicode_names= []
+    for ix in range(sys.maxunicode+1):
+        try:
+            unicode_names.append( (ix, unicodedata.name(unichr(ix))) )
+        except ValueError: # no name for the character
+            pass
+    for arg in args:
+        pat = re.compile(arg, re.I)
+        matches = [(x,y) for (x,y) in unicode_names
+                       if pat.search(y) is not None]
+        if matches:
+            print "***", arg, "matches", "***"
+            for (x,y) in matches:
+                print "%s (%d)" % (y,x)
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    main(sys.argv[1:])