Unicode Explained

Short Long name of property Java function

blk Block UnicodeBlock.of

gc General Category getType

IDC ID Continue isUnicodeIdentifierPart

IDS ID Start isUnicodeIdentifierStart

lc Lowercase Mapping toLowerCase

Lower Lowercase isLowerCase

nv Numeric Value getNumericValue

tc Titlecase Mapping toTitleCase

uc Uppercase Mapping toUpperCase

Upper Uppercase isUpperCase

WSpace White Space isWhitespace

The Java function isLetter doesn’t quite correspond to the Alphabetic property, since

the latter is true also for characters with General Category value of Nl (Number, letter)

and for characters with the OAlpha (Other, Alphabetic) property. For most practical

purposes, isLetter is adequate for testing whether a character is alphabetic. In some

cases, isUnicodeIdentifierStart is better, since it includes Nl.

In addition to functions like isUnicodeIdentifierStart, there are functions like isJa

vaIdentifierStart, which are quite similar but allow $ and _, too.

In Java 5.0 and later, most of the functions that correspond to Unicode properties are

defined both for character (char) and integer (int) arguments. In the latter case, the

argument is treated as a code point, which may refer outside the BMP. Thus, you can

relatively conveniently work with non-BMP characters, too.

The return values of functions that correspond to Unicode properties with enumerated

values are technically of type byte or int. The values, encoded ...