Unicode 18.0.0

Why can a precomposed letter fail an exact match against a letter plus a mark?

U+00E9 is the canonical composed form of U+0065 followed by U+0301. Those strings are not an exact match. Code points: U+00E9. Choosing NFC or NFD changes which scalars are stored. The runtime normalization data version is runtime-unknown. Appearance was not tested. A non-equivalent fallback is "é" (The canonical decomposition of U+00E9). Two scalars. An exact match against U+00E9 fails until both sides use the same form. Exact string match: no. NFC match: yes. Appearance and meaning were not tested. Font coverage, shaping, and application acceptance were not tested, so those results are unknown.

Code points

é U+00E9

What was checked

Precomposed letter and a combining mark

U+00E9 is the canonical composed form of U+0065 followed by U+0301. Those strings are not an exact match.

Choosing NFC or NFD changes which scalars are stored. The runtime normalization data version is runtime-unknown. Appearance was not tested.

Compare code points before treating the strings as the same value. Normalize only at a boundary you control, and keep the original scalars when storage must stay unchanged.

Fallback é: The canonical decomposition of U+00E9 Two scalars. An exact match against U+00E9 fails until both sides use the same form.

What this does not prove

No OS, font, browser, application, field policy or rendering engine was tested. Unicode validity and segmentation do not establish actual display or acceptance.

Machine-readable JSON · Exact lookup · Markdown · Capability lab