Dyalog Forums

What is the best way to insert a Unicode symbol such as a musical flat sign (U+266D) into text produced by Dyalog APL?

You can use the function ⎕UCS to generate Unicode characters from code points, in this case that would be (⎕UCS 9837). Depending on your environment, you may simply be able to cut and paste the symbol into character constants, '♭' displays fine for me under Windows.

Thanks, Morten. Where is the [UCS] table that assigns 9837 to the flat symbol?

9837 is the decimal equivalent of 266D that you had found yourself. There is a user command to do conversions, if you don't have a hex calculator handy:

You can also use any 4-digit hexadecimal code (0000–FFFF) directly via the ⎕JSON system function:

      ⎕JSON'"\u266D"' ⍝ note the inner "double-quotes"
♭

For added convenience, and to handle less than 4 digits, we can define:

      U←{0 ⎕JSON 1⌽'""\u',¯4↑'000',⍕⍵}
      U'266D'
♭