Are two glyphs the same emoji?

emoji_identical() compares glyphs element by element and says whether each pair is the same emoji, which means the same code points once the variation selectors U+FE0F and U+FE0E are set aside. With details = TRUE it also says how two glyphs differ: not at all, only in a selector, only in skin tone, or in the emoji itself.

Usage

emoji_identical(x, y, details = FALSE)

Arguments

x, y: Character vectors of glyphs, the same length or one of them of length one.
details: If FALSE (default), return a logical vector. If TRUE, return a tibble describing each comparison.

Value

With details = FALSE, a logical vector: TRUE where the two glyphs are the same emoji, NA where either is NA. With details = TRUE, a tibble with columns x, y, identical (the same vector), exact (the code points are identical, selector included), difference ("none", "variation selector", "skin tone", "different" or "not one emoji"), and x_codepoints and y_codepoints, the two code-point sequences written out ("U+2764 U+FE0F") for the record.

Details

The comparison is by code points and nothing else, so it answers for any two strings: two that are not emoji are identical when their code points are. difference says so. When either side, in its canonical spelling, is not a catalogue spelling, it is "not one emoji", whatever else is true: a grinning face followed by a skin tone (U+1F600 U+1F3FB) is a face and a swatch the face cannot take, never a toned variant of the face.

What this can and cannot tell you

This is the comparison a forensic or legal question needs, and it has a hard limit that belongs here rather than in a footnote. tidyEmoji can say which code points a message contains and which Unicode version defines them. It cannot say what the sender or the recipient saw. Rendering is decided by the font and the platform: the same code points draw differently on two phones, an emoji newer than a device's font draws as an empty box or as its separate parts, and a skin-tone sequence can draw as a base emoji beside a colour swatch. No dataset of vendor renderings is available to the package (all eight vendor_* columns of the emoji package's table are empty), so nothing here reports one.

Two glyphs that are identical here can therefore look different to people, and two that are not can look alike. Treat a TRUE as "the same characters were sent", never as "the same picture was seen".

Examples

emoji_identical("\u2764", "\u2764\ufe0f")
#> [1] TRUE
emoji_identical("\U0001f600", "\U0001f602")
#> [1] FALSE

emoji_identical(c("\u2764", "\U0001f44d", "\U0001f600"),
                c("\u2764\ufe0f", "\U0001f44d\U0001f3fd", "\U0001f602"),
                details = TRUE)
#> # A tibble: 3 × 7
#>   x     y     identical exact difference         x_codepoints y_codepoints   
#>   <chr> <chr> <lgl>     <lgl> <chr>              <chr>        <chr>          
#> 1 ❤     ❤️     TRUE      FALSE variation selector U+2764       U+2764 U+FE0F  
#> 2 👍    👍🏽    FALSE     FALSE skin tone          U+1F44D      U+1F44D U+1F3FD
#> 3 😀    😂    FALSE     FALSE different          U+1F600      U+1F602