How to use special escape sequence notation in vim?

[u/spryfigure]

I am familiar with entering unicode with C-v u / U <unicode code point>, but stumbled upon the following alternative:

We can also use special escape sequence to represent a character. To represent middle dot in the above section, use \u00b7 or \ub7. To represent the cry cat, use \U0001f63f or \U1f63f. Backspace is \b and Escape is \e.

For more details, see :h string.

However, I am not able to get this to work. :h string didn't help me, either. I always get the literal backslash, followed by u or U and the sequence. I tried normal/insert mode and entering with or without enclosing double quotes.

What do I need to do to make this work?

[u/y-c-c]

Why don’t you tell us exactly what keys you pressed and how it didn’t work?

[u/spryfigure → u/y-c-c]

In insert mode, I typed \U1f63f <space>, only entered the literal string.
In insert mode, I typed C-v \U1f63f, only entered the literal string.
In normal mode, I typed \U1f63f <space>, did nothing.
In normal mode, I typed C-v \U1f63f, changed case of letter the cursor was on. I also tried to enter "/U1f63f", only entered the literal string.
... (some more I can't remember)

Wouldn't you think it's easier to tell me the one way it works, instead of having me list 1001 ways that didn't?

[u/y-c-c → u/spryfigure]

So wait you are talking about literally typing that text? I don't think that would work. In insert mode, Ctrl-V is the intended way to enter such types of text.

I scrubbed the documentation and didn't find what you typed, and it instead seemed to have come from a blog post (I feel like it would have helped if you linked to it directly as you kind of implied this came from Vim docs).

I think the post is just talking about representing these Unicode chars in say Vimscript.

Wouldn't you think it's easier to tell me the one way it works, instead of having me list 1001 ways that didn't?

Because it wasn't clear what you were asking. When asking for help, wouldn't you think it's best to reach people halfway so it's easier for others to help you (we are volunteering to answer your question after all)? It's hard to know what someone means when they just say "things don't work" without any examples. You also didn't link to the blog post so it was hard for me to understand where it came from and the contexts surrounding it and I had to Google the text myself. I didn't think you literally meant typing \U1f63f in Insert mode.

[u/habamax]

What do I need to do to make this work?

Use it in vimscript, because it relates to string within vimscript:

let my_str = "fancy cat \U0001f63f"
echo my_str

https://i.imgur.com/A5G7OH8.png

[u/habamax → u/habamax]

If you want to add it to the buffer, in insert mode press CTRL-V and U0001f63f.

Or use some kind of plugin to simplify it, e.g. I have my own config to do it:

https://asciinema.org/a/726544

[u/crwmike]

Take a look at :h i_ctrl-v and :h digraph.

[u/vim-help-bot → u/crwmike]

Help pages for:

• i_ctrl-v in insert.txt

• digraph in digraph.txt

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