Background

In this post, we will use Shane Ray’s Invisible Character Visualizer to view non-printable Unicode characters.

Artifacts

As our content contains un-printable characters, it is easier to avail the contents in a file that is easily share-able.

GitHub

As always here we will go with GitHub.

The small sample file is available here :-

unicodeSampleFiles/sql/dbo.customer.sql
Link

 

Text

Here is the text we will be working with :

USE [tempdb]
GO

/****** Object:  Table [dbo].[customer‬]    Script Date: 6/19/2019 8:52:08 PM ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

Usage

Shane Ray

Invisible Character Visualizer

Visual Studio – Visual Studio Community Edition 2017

Launched Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition.

Original View

Here is the original view in Visual Studio

 

Outline

Let us install and use the Visual Studio Extension :-

1. Access Visual Studio Gallery
   • https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ShaneRay.InvisibleCharacterVisualizer ( Link )
   • Download
2. Install
   • Launch the installer
     • By double-clicking on the downloaded vsix file
   • Choose the Visual Studio Installs to target
3. Launch Visual Studio
4. Load Files

Access Visual Studio Gallery

Install

Install downloaded Visual Studio Extension

It is easy enough to launch it just like any other application.

Screen Shots

Invisible Character Visualizer – Install

Invisible Character Visualizer – Installing

Invisible Character Visualizer – Install Complete

File View – Post Install

Image

Extension

We can quickly see the invisible character (0x202C).

Referenced Work

1. Visual Code Issues
   • noraj
     • Display invisible character #58252
       • Profile :- noraj opened this issue on Sep 8, 2018
         Link
   • Juan Potato
     • View invisible characters #31291
       • Profile :- JuanPotato opened this issue on Jul 23, 2017
         Link

 

Dedicated

We can clearly see that Shane Ray’s Visual Studio Extension, Invisible Character Visualizer, is very capable.