bash-replacing a number with unicode character using sed
bash, printf, sed, unicode
Solution
With bash (since v4.2) or zsh, the simple solution is to use the `$'...'` syntax, which understands C escapes including `\u` escapes:
$ echo 011010 | sed $'s/1/\u2701/g'
0✁✁0✁0
If you have Gnu sed, you can use escape sequences in the `s//` command. Gnu `sed`, unfortunately, does not understand `\u` unicode escapes, but it does understand `\x` hex escapes. However, to get it to decode them, you need to make sure that it sees the backslashes. Then you can do the translation in UTF-8, assuming you know the UTF-8 sequence corresponding to the Unicode codepoint:
$ # Quote the argument
$ echo 011010 | sed 's/1/\xE2\x9C\x81/g'
0✁✁0✁0
$ # Or escape the backslashes
$ echo 011010 | sed s/1/\\xE2\\x9C\\x81/g
0✁✁0✁0
$ # This doesn't work because the \ is removed by bash before sed sees it
$ echo 011010 | sed s/1/\xE2\x9C\x81/g
0xE2x9Cx81xE2x9Cx810xE2x9Cx810
$ # So that was the same as: sed s/1/xE2x9Cx81/g
Problem
So I have this output generated from printf ``` 011010 ``` Now I want to pipe it and use sed to replace 0's and 1's with unicode character, so I get unicode characters printed instead of binary (011010). I can do this just copy-pasting the characters themselves, but I want to use values instead like the ones found in unicode table: ``` Position: 0x2701 Decimal: 9985 Symbol: ✁ ``` How do I use the above values with sed to generate the character?