# Unicode beyond Basic Multilingual Plane

String manipulation takes a dive when characters beyond \:FFFF are used e.g. Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols. The characters display fine but doing string manipulation is very unpredictable:

ToCharacterCode["𝕬"] (* Actually is \U0001d56c *)
StringLength["𝕬"]
(* {55349, 56684} *)
(* 2 *)


Compare with python

>>> len(u'𝕬')
1


$CharacterEncoding = "Unicode" or $CharacterEncoding = "UTF8" does not help, is there some way to set string encoding properly?

-
– WReach Nov 23 '12 at 19:34
@WReach Thanks! Couldn't find them searching google and here. – ssch Nov 23 '12 at 19:36
@WReach Would you be willing to write a summary answer here, unless a duplicate already exists on this site? – Mr.Wizard May 23 at 12:39
@Mr.Wizard I added a CW response that points to some of the related questions. The present question is more general than (215), so I am unsure as to whether it should be considered a duplicate. – WReach Jun 6 at 23:04

As of version 10.1, Mathematica does not support characters beyond the basic multilingual pane. John Fultz of WRI stated this explicitly as a comment on this question, which asks how to access supplementary CJK ideographs outside of Plane 0.

Some of the issues, and partial workarounds, are discussed on StackOverflow here and here.

-