Vector helpers: convert emoji to/from names and shortcodes

Small vector-level helpers for ad-hoc use. They do not take a data frame.

Usage

as_emoji_name(x)

as_emoji_shortcode(x)

as_emoji(x)

Arguments

x: A character vector of emoji glyphs (for as_emoji_name, as_emoji_shortcode) or of shortcodes/names (for as_emoji).

Value

A character vector the same length as x.

Details

as_emoji_name(x) maps emoji glyphs to their Unicode names.
as_emoji_shortcode(x) maps emoji glyphs to a shortcode.
as_emoji(x) maps names/shortcodes to the emoji glyph (emojize).

All three resolve through emoji_key(), so qualified emoji (carrying U+FE0F) and unqualified forms resolve identically. Unmatched inputs return NA.

as_emoji() accepts either namespace in the same argument, and 464 strings belong to both – they are the exact Unicode name of one emoji and a shortcode alias of another. It resolves them in a fixed order: exact Unicode name first, then shortcode, then emoji's own name table. An exact name match is the stronger signal, so as_emoji("dog") is the emoji actually named "dog" (a dog, U+1F415), not the one whose alias is :dog: (a dog face, U+1F436).

For 17 of those 464 strings the two namespaces disagree, and there as_emoji() and text_to_emoji() differ by design: a :dog: token is explicitly delimited as a shortcode, so text_to_emoji() reads it in the shortcode namespace and produces the dog face. The pattern is an emoji whose name is a bare noun versus the "... face" variant that carries the alias (cat, cow, pig, tiger, mouse, rabbit), or a plain object versus a decorated one (umbrella, snowman, calendar, sunglasses). Pass a shortcode through text_to_emoji(), or the full Unicode name ("dog face") to as_emoji(), if you need one namespace specifically.

Which shortcode you get

as_emoji_shortcode() returns one shortcode per emoji, not per spelling: the first alias of the emoji's fully-qualified (RGI) form. That is what makes it agree with emoji_to_text() and survive a round trip, but it is not always the first alias of the glyph you passed in. 344 codepoint keys have a different first alias on each of their two spellings, so for 175 of the catalogue's 5042 rows the two answers differ: as_emoji_shortcode("\u2764") is "heart", the qualified heart's alias, where the bare U+2764 row's own first alias is "red_heart".

emoji_search() reports the other one – the matched row's own alias, since a search result is a row – so the two verbs can disagree on the same glyph. Both resolve back to the same emoji through text_to_emoji(), which reads every alias, so where both answer the disagreement is cosmetic. Where they differ in substance is the 189 rows that have no alias: emoji_search() reports NA for those, while as_emoji_shortcode() still answers for all 189, having borrowed the alias of the glyph's other spelling.

Examples

as_emoji_name(c("\U0001f600", "\u2764\ufe0f"))
#> [1] "grinning face" "red heart"    
as_emoji_shortcode(c("\U0001f600", "\u2764\ufe0f"))
#> [1] "grinning" "heart"   
as_emoji(c("grinning", "heart"))
#> [1] "😀" "❤️"