NAME

unicode-show - Scan and annotate suspicious Unicode characters

NAME

unicode-show - detect and annotate non-ASCII or suspicious Unicode characters in text or files

SYNOPSIS

unicode-show [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION

unicode-show is a utility that reads text input (from standard input or files) and highlights suspicious Unicode characters, such as those outside the safe ASCII range. This tool is useful for identifying potentially malicious or misleading Unicode characters in source code, logs, or user input.

For each suspicious character, <strong>unicode-show</strong> prints:

• The line it appears on, annotated with [U+XXXX] markers
• A description including the character (if visible), Unicode codepoint, character name, and category

Color output is disabled if:

• The environment variable $NOCOLOR is set
• The environment variable $NO_COLOR is set to 1
• $TERM is set to dumb
• Output is redirected (non-interactive terminal)

OPTIONS

This tool takes no options. Any arguments are treated as file paths. If no arguments are given, input is read from standard input.

EXIT STATUS

• 0 - No suspicious Unicode characters found
• 1 - Suspicious characters were detected
• 2 - An error occurred (e.g., file I/O or decoding failure)

EXAMPLES

unicode-show suspicious.txt

unicode-show file1.txt file2.md

cat file1.txt | unicode-show

NOCOLOR=1 unicode-show example.txt

ENVIRONMENT

• NOCOLOR - disables color output if set
• NO_COLOR - disables color output if set to 1
• TERM - if set to dumb, disables color output

AUTHOR

This man page has been written by Patrick Schleizer (adrelanos@whonix.org).