whatchar

whatchar is a VS Code extension that shows character information at the cursor position.

Features

Whenever you move the cursor in the editor, the status bar (bottom right) displays the following information about the character under the cursor:

Unicode code point (e.g. U+3042)
Decimal value (e.g. Dec: 12354)
UTF-8 byte sequence (e.g. UTF-8: E38182)
UTF-16BE (network byte order) byte sequence (e.g. UTF-16BE: 3042)
CP932 (Shift_JIS) byte sequence (e.g. CP932: 82A0)

Status bar display examples:

Character	Status bar
Printable (`あ`)	`"あ" (U+3042, Dec: 12354, UTF-8: E38182, UTF-16BE: 3042, CP932: 82A0)`
Non-printable	`(U+000A, Dec: 10, UTF-8: 0A, UTF-16BE: 000A, CP932: 0A)`
CP932 unmappable (`😀`)	`"😀" (U+1F600, Dec: 128512, UTF-8: F09F9880, UTF-16BE: D83DDE00, CP932: (unmappable))`

You can also run the Show what character command (whatchar.show) to display the same information as a popup notification.

This extension is useful for identifying characters that look similar, such as full-width vs. half-width characters, or detecting invisible control characters in text.

Commands

Command	Description
`whatchar.show`	Show character info for the character at the cursor as a notification

Extension Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
`whatchar.showOnCursorMove`	boolean	`true`	Show character info in the status bar whenever the cursor moves. Set to `false` to disable the automatic status bar update.

Release Notes

0.0.1

Initial release.

whatchar

jca02266

whatchar

Features

Commands

Extension Settings

Release Notes

0.0.1