Data.Char

The Char type and associated operations.

Documentation

data Char

The character type Char is an enumeration whose values represent Unicode (or equivalently ISO/IEC 10646) characters (see http://www.unicode.org/ for details). This set extends the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set (the first 256 characters), which is itself an extension of the ASCII character set (the first 128 characters). A character literal in Haskell has type Char.

To convert a Char to or from the corresponding Int value defined by Unicode, use toEnum and fromEnum from the Enum class respectively (or equivalently ord and chr).

Instances

Bounded Char

Enum Char

Eq Char

Data Char

Ord Char

Read Char

Show Char

Ix Char

Typeable Char

Generic Char

Storable Char

IsChar Char

PrintfArg Char

IsString [Char]

Character classification

Unicode characters are divided into letters, numbers, marks, punctuation, symbols, separators (including spaces) and others (including control characters).

isControl :: Char -> Bool

Selects control characters, which are the non-printing characters of the Latin-1 subset of Unicode.

isSpace :: Char -> Bool

Returns True for any Unicode space character, and the control characters \t, \n, \r, \f, \v.

isLower :: Char -> Bool

Selects lower-case alphabetic Unicode characters (letters).

isUpper :: Char -> Bool

Selects upper-case or title-case alphabetic Unicode characters (letters). Title case is used by a small number of letter ligatures like the single-character form of Lj.

isAlpha :: Char -> Bool

Selects alphabetic Unicode characters (lower-case, upper-case and title-case letters, plus letters of caseless scripts and modifiers letters). This function is equivalent to isLetter.

isAlphaNum :: Char -> Bool

Selects alphabetic or numeric digit Unicode characters.

Note that numeric digits outside the ASCII range are selected by this function but not by isDigit. Such digits may be part of identifiers but are not used by the printer and reader to represent numbers.

isPrint :: Char -> Bool

Selects printable Unicode characters (letters, numbers, marks, punctuation, symbols and spaces).

isDigit :: Char -> Bool

Selects ASCII digits, i.e. '0'..'9'.

isOctDigit :: Char -> Bool

Selects ASCII octal digits, i.e. '0'..'7'.

isHexDigit :: Char -> Bool

Selects ASCII hexadecimal digits, i.e. '0'..'9', 'a'..'f', 'A'..'F'.

isLetter :: Char -> Bool

Selects alphabetic Unicode characters (lower-case, upper-case and title-case letters, plus letters of caseless scripts and modifiers letters). This function is equivalent to isAlpha.

isMark :: Char -> Bool

Selects Unicode mark characters, e.g. accents and the like, which combine with preceding letters.

isNumber :: Char -> Bool

Selects Unicode numeric characters, including digits from various scripts, Roman numerals, etc.

isPunctuation :: Char -> Bool

Selects Unicode punctuation characters, including various kinds of connectors, brackets and quotes.

isSymbol :: Char -> Bool

Selects Unicode symbol characters, including mathematical and currency symbols.

isSeparator :: Char -> Bool

Selects Unicode space and separator characters.

Subranges

isAscii :: Char -> Bool

Selects the first 128 characters of the Unicode character set, corresponding to the ASCII character set.

isLatin1 :: Char -> Bool

Selects the first 256 characters of the Unicode character set, corresponding to the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set.

isAsciiUpper :: Char -> Bool

Selects ASCII upper-case letters, i.e. characters satisfying both isAscii and isUpper.

isAsciiLower :: Char -> Bool

Selects ASCII lower-case letters, i.e. characters satisfying both isAscii and isLower.

Unicode general categories

data GeneralCategory

Unicode General Categories (column 2 of the UnicodeData table) in the order they are listed in the Unicode standard.

Constructors

UppercaseLetter

Lu: Letter, Uppercase

LowercaseLetter

Ll: Letter, Lowercase

TitlecaseLetter

Lt: Letter, Titlecase

ModifierLetter

Lm: Letter, Modifier

OtherLetter

Lo: Letter, Other

NonSpacingMark

Mn: Mark, Non-Spacing

SpacingCombiningMark

Mc: Mark, Spacing Combining

EnclosingMark

Me: Mark, Enclosing

DecimalNumber

Nd: Number, Decimal

LetterNumber

Nl: Number, Letter

OtherNumber

No: Number, Other

ConnectorPunctuation

Pc: Punctuation, Connector

DashPunctuation

Pd: Punctuation, Dash

OpenPunctuation

Ps: Punctuation, Open

ClosePunctuation

Pe: Punctuation, Close

InitialQuote

Pi: Punctuation, Initial quote

FinalQuote

Pf: Punctuation, Final quote

OtherPunctuation

Po: Punctuation, Other

MathSymbol

Sm: Symbol, Math

CurrencySymbol

Sc: Symbol, Currency

ModifierSymbol

Sk: Symbol, Modifier

OtherSymbol

So: Symbol, Other

Space

Zs: Separator, Space

LineSeparator

Zl: Separator, Line

ParagraphSeparator

Zp: Separator, Paragraph

Control

Cc: Other, Control

Format

Cf: Other, Format

Surrogate

Cs: Other, Surrogate

PrivateUse

Co: Other, Private Use

NotAssigned

Cn: Other, Not Assigned

Instances

Bounded GeneralCategory

Enum GeneralCategory

Eq GeneralCategory

Ord GeneralCategory

Read GeneralCategory

Show GeneralCategory

Ix GeneralCategory

generalCategory :: Char -> GeneralCategory

The Unicode general category of the character.

Case conversion

toUpper :: Char -> Char

Convert a letter to the corresponding upper-case letter, if any. Any other character is returned unchanged.

toLower :: Char -> Char

Convert a letter to the corresponding lower-case letter, if any. Any other character is returned unchanged.

toTitle :: Char -> Char

Convert a letter to the corresponding title-case or upper-case letter, if any. (Title case differs from upper case only for a small number of ligature letters.) Any other character is returned unchanged.

Single digit characters

digitToInt :: Char -> Int

Convert a single digit Char to the corresponding Int. This function fails unless its argument satisfies isHexDigit, but recognises both upper and lower-case hexadecimal digits (i.e. '0'..'9', 'a'..'f', 'A'..'F').

intToDigit :: Int -> Char

Convert an Int in the range 0..15 to the corresponding single digit Char. This function fails on other inputs, and generates lower-case hexadecimal digits.

Numeric representations

ord :: Char -> Int

The fromEnum method restricted to the type Char.

chr :: Int -> Char

The toEnum method restricted to the type Char.

String representations

showLitChar :: Char -> ShowS

Convert a character to a string using only printable characters, using Haskell source-language escape conventions. For example:

 showLitChar '\n' s  =  "\\n" ++ s

lexLitChar :: ReadS String

Read a string representation of a character, using Haskell source-language escape conventions. For example:

 lexLitChar  "\\nHello"  =  [("\\n", "Hello")]

readLitChar :: ReadS Char

Read a string representation of a character, using Haskell source-language escape conventions, and convert it to the character that it encodes. For example:

 readLitChar "\\nHello"  =  [('\n', "Hello")]