Elixir CLI utility to find Unicode Characters.

Elixir is an arabic word, and alef is the name of the first arabic letter.

alef lets you find Unicode characters by name. To use, provide one or more words as command-line arguments:

$ ./alef chess queen
U+2655	♕	WHITE CHESS QUEEN
U+265B	♛	BLACK CHESS QUEEN
$ ./alef cat eyes
U+1F638	😸	GRINNING CAT FACE WITH SMILING EYES
U+1F63B	😻	SMILING CAT FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES
U+1F63D	😽	KISSING CAT FACE WITH CLOSED EYES

Note: alef needs a copy of the UnicodeData.txt file which you need to download from unicode.org and save in your home directory. The next version of alef will do that automatically, but this MVP doesn't.

To run the tests:

$ mix test
Compiling 1 file (.ex)
Generated alef app
......

Finished in 0.06 seconds
6 tests, 0 failures

Randomized with seed 325308

To build the alef executable:

$ mix escript.build
Compiling 1 file (.ex)
Generated alef app
Generated escript alef with MIX_ENV=dev
$ ls -lah alef
-rwxr-xr-x  1 lramalho  staff   2.7M Mar 15 14:29 alef

Note: the alef binary depends on the escript program that comes with the Erlang distribution.