chars

Look up a character by its value

$ chars '[ß]'

$ chars [U+1F63C]

$ chars [10]

$ chars "[^C]"

chars [characters...]

characters...
    One or more characters to display information about. If no characters are specified, chars reads standard input.

The chars command is a simple utility designed to display detailed information about characters within a specified range, or based on user input. It is primarily used to examine the properties of individual characters, including their decimal, hexadecimal, octal, and binary representations, as well as their names (if available). This command is particularly helpful for programmers and system administrators who need to work with character encodings and understand the underlying representation of text characters. It can assist in debugging character-related issues or in understanding the behavior of character-based operations. The chars command's concise output makes it a quick and easy way to inspect characters directly from the command line, aiding in tasks such as character set exploration or verification.

The chars command may not be universally available across all Linux distributions. Its functionality is relatively limited compared to more comprehensive character encoding tools like iconv or programming languages. The command relies on the system's character map for character names, which may vary.

The history of the chars command is not well documented and might be distribution-specific. It is likely a utility developed to quickly inspect characters and their properties. Because of its simplicity it doesn't have widespread usage but it may be installed by default by some distributions.

ascii(7), iconv(1)