emoji-test-regex-pattern

emoji-test-regex-pattern offers Java- and JavaScript-compatible regular expression patterns to match all emoji symbols and sequences listed in the emoji-test.txt file provided as part of Unicode® Technical Standard #51.

These patterns can then be embedded into source code as part of projects such as emoji-regex.

This repository contains a script that generates this regular expression pattern based on Unicode data. Because of this, the pattern can easily be updated whenever new emoji are added to the Unicode standard.

emoji-test-regex-pattern also includes other useful assets! For every supported version of the Emoji standard, emoji-test-regex-pattern generates the following files:

• index.txt — a list of all the emoji matched by the other files in that folder alongside their code points in U+XXXX notation.
• index-strings.txt — a list of all the emoji matched by the other files in that folder.
• cpp-re2.txt — a regular expression pattern matching all the emoji in index.txt compatible with the C++ RE2 library.
• css.txt — a CSS unicode-range value matching each code point in any of the emoji sequences in index.txt.
• java.txt — a Java-compatible regular expression pattern matching all the emoji in index.txt.
• javascript.txt — a JavaScript-compatible regular expression pattern matching all the emoji in index.txt, for use in regular expressions without the u flag.
• javascript-u.txt — a JavaScript-compatible regular expression pattern matching all the emoji in index.txt, for use in regular expressions with the u flag.
• javascript-v.txt — a JavaScript-compatible regular expression pattern matching all the emoji in index.txt, for use in regular expressions with the v flag.

Note that although Unicode Emoji UTS#51 follows the versioning system used by the Unicode Standard, the version numbers can be different. For example, when Unicode 13.0 was released, so was Emoji 13.0. But later, Emoji 13.1 was published while the Unicode version number remained at 13.0. Therefore, we use the Emoji version as specified in UTS#51 (and not the version of the Unicode Standard itself) to version the different patterns:

dist/emoji-13.0/index.txt
dist/emoji-13.0/index-strings.txt
dist/emoji-13.0/cpp-re2.txt
dist/emoji-13.0/css.txt
dist/emoji-13.0/java.txt
dist/emoji-13.0/javascript.txt
dist/emoji-13.0/javascript-u.txt
dist/emoji-13.0/javascript-v.txt

dist/emoji-13.1/*.txt

dist/emoji-14.0/*.txt

dist/emoji-15.0/*.txt

dist/emoji-15.1/*.txt

dist/emoji-16.0/*.txt

dist/emoji-17.0/*.txt

dist/latest/*.txt

See the dist/ folder.

For maintainers

How to update emoji-test-regex-pattern after new UTS#51 releases

1. Update the Unicode data dependency in package.json by running the following commands:

   # Example: Emoji 18.0 (UTS#51) is released, and its data is included in the @unicode/unicode-18.0.0 package.
   npm install unicode-emoji-18.0@npm:@unicode/unicode-18.0.0@latest --save-dev
   

2. Generate the new output:

   npm run build
   

3. Verify that dist contains the new file.

4. Send a pull request with the changes, and get it reviewed & merged.

5. On the main branch, bump the version number in package.json:

   npm version patch -m 'Release v%s'
   

   Instead of patch, use minor or major as needed.

   Note that this produces a Git commit + tag.

6. Push the release commit and tag:

   git push && git push --tags
   

   Our CI then automatically publishes the new release to npm.

Author

Mathias Bynens

License

This project is a fork of emoji-regex, with a different goal. emoji-test-regex-pattern is available under the same MIT license as the original project.