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    Dash and Hyphen - no visible difference

    Help wanted · · · – – – · · ·
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    • Robin Tyers
      Robin Tyers last edited by

      I was trying to debug something which appeared did not appear to have any issues, but it actually contained two very different characters. A dash ( - ) and a hyphen ( – ) which caused my script to fail because of the use of the hyphen. They appear the differently on here as I am writing this, but was using trusty Notepad++ as the text editor, which is where I came unstuck as they looked identical. Is it possible to make these two look more obviously different as they do in other text editors?

      Many thanks,

      Rob

      Alan Kilborn 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • Alan Kilborn
        Alan Kilborn @Robin Tyers last edited by

        @Robin-Tyers

        Isn’t the simplest answer is to choose a font in Notepad++ where these two characters appear differently?

        Robin Tyers Alan Kilborn 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • Robin Tyers
          Robin Tyers @Alan Kilborn last edited by

          @Alan-Kilborn Thank you for that suggestion and yes it does work well! I was not aware of this limitation with the default “Courier New” font after doing a default installation in Windows until I was using a different editor. Many thanks.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Alan Kilborn
            Alan Kilborn @Alan Kilborn last edited by

            Hmmm, it isn’t easy to immediately “pick up” visually, even in a font that does have an “obvious” difference for the characters. You’d almost have to see them both near each other to know which was which.

            This is actually a rather “tough” problem. :-)

            Maybe a visual effect like this is more desirable?:

            d0c310fc-7806-41c7-b1f0-c1b89c8470ae-image.png

            If that’s acceptable, I can go more into how to achieve it.

            Robin Tyers 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Robin Tyers
              Robin Tyers @Alan Kilborn last edited by

              @Alan-Kilborn Thank you for that. I have had a look at why I picked it up in Notepad rather than Notepad ++ and found that yes the font may be the key. I have now updated to use “Consolas” instead of “Courier New”, which displays the difference far more clearly and is still has very clearly different 1 and lower case L characters. I will never forget this though, just in case the “Consolas” font has it’s own quirks - you just don’t know until you know. Thanks for your time.

              Alan Kilborn 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • Alan Kilborn
                Alan Kilborn last edited by

                It appears there are a fair number of Unicode dash/hyphen/thingies that appear similarly; I found them here: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Pd

                And I show how they appear in Notepad++'s default Courier New font, with their U+xxxx notation:

                7824fa1c-1e0f-4c7e-a39f-ba59dbd004e1-image.png

                Ok, so not all would be hard to distinguish, but there’s enough of them with a common “look” that this might be a “problem”, in any font.

                Robin Tyers 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • Alan Kilborn
                  Alan Kilborn @Robin Tyers last edited by

                  @Robin-Tyers said in Dash and Hyphen - no visible difference:

                  “Consolas” instead of “Courier New”

                  Consolas is indeed a good choice.
                  I oscillate between liking Consolas and Fira Code.
                  Deja vu sans mono might be a good one as well.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • Robin Tyers
                    Robin Tyers @Alan Kilborn last edited by

                    @Alan-Kilborn said in Dash and Hyphen - no visible difference:

                    It appears there are a fair number of Unicode dash/hyphen/thingies that appear similarly; I found them here: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Pd

                    And I show how they appear in Notepad++'s default Courier New font, with their U+xxxx notation:

                    7824fa1c-1e0f-4c7e-a39f-ba59dbd004e1-image.png

                    Ok, so not all would be hard to distinguish, but there’s enough of them with a common “look” that this might be a “problem”, in any font.

                    Wow, I never knew there were that many variations. Thank you for taking the time to highlight that and for the font suggestions.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • guy038
                      guy038 last edited by guy038

                      Hi, @alan-kilborn,

                      Again, as for the https://graphemica.com link, many thanks for pointing us to the https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/ site !

                      Just for information, the main sections are :

                      https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/           :  Home
                      https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/charsets   :  List of Character Sets
                      https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/block      :  List of Unicode Blocks
                      https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category   :  List of Unicode Categories
                      https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/scripts    :  List of Unicode Scripts
                      https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/html       :  List of HTML Entities
                      
                      https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/search?q   :  List of Unicode Characters 
                      
                      
                      INPUT Examples in the "Search" zone :
                      
                      -    Char                    =>   Character ITSELF
                      
                      -    U+10180  or  &#x10180   =>   Character U+10180                  ( Character :  GREEK FIVE OBOLS SIGN )
                      
                      -    &#10180                 =>   Character U+27C4 = U + Hex(10180)  ( Character :  OPEN SUPERSET )
                      

                      Cheers,

                      guy038

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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