Overview
The utilities module exports helper functions for character type detection, primarily used internally but available for advanced use cases.
isArabicDiacritic
Check if a character is an Arabic diacritic (tashkeel/harakāt).
A single character to test
boolean - true if the character is an Arabic diacritic
Example
import { isArabicDiacritic } from 'bitaboom';
console.log(isArabicDiacritic('َ')); // true (fatha)
console.log(isArabicDiacritic('ِ')); // true (kasra)
console.log(isArabicDiacritic('ّ')); // true (shadda)
console.log(isArabicDiacritic('ب')); // false (letter ba)
console.log(isArabicDiacritic('a')); // false (Latin letter)
- Short vowels: fatha (َ), damma (ُ), kasra (ِ)
- Sukun (ْ)
- Shadda (ّ)
- Tanween marks
- Other diacritics in the Unicode ranges U+064B-U+0652, U+0670, U+0617-U+061A, U+06D6-U+06ED
isArabicLetter
Check if a character is an Arabic letter.
A single character to test
boolean - true if the character is an Arabic letter
Example
import { isArabicLetter } from 'bitaboom';
console.log(isArabicLetter('ب')); // true
console.log(isArabicLetter('ا')); // true
console.log(isArabicLetter('ع')); // true
console.log(isArabicLetter('َ')); // false (diacritic)
console.log(isArabicLetter('a')); // false (Latin letter)
console.log(isArabicLetter('5')); // false (digit)
- All basic Arabic letters (ا-ي)
- Hamza variants
- Common Arabic letter forms
isLatinLetter
Check if a character is a Latin letter.
A single character to test
boolean - true if the character is a Latin letter (a-z, A-Z)
Example
import { isLatinLetter } from 'bitaboom';
console.log(isLatinLetter('a')); // true
console.log(isLatinLetter('Z')); // true
console.log(isLatinLetter('ب')); // false (Arabic letter)
console.log(isLatinLetter('5')); // false (digit)
console.log(isLatinLetter(' ')); // false (space)
- Lowercase letters: a-z
- Uppercase letters: A-Z
This function does NOT include Latin letters with diacritics (ā, ī, ū, etc.). It only matches basic ASCII letters.
Common use cases
Analyzing text composition
import { isArabicLetter, isLatinLetter, isArabicDiacritic } from 'bitaboom';
function analyzeText(text: string) {
let arabicLetters = 0;
let latinLetters = 0;
let diacritics = 0;
for (const char of text) {
if (isArabicDiacritic(char)) diacritics++;
else if (isArabicLetter(char)) arabicLetters++;
else if (isLatinLetter(char)) latinLetters++;
}
return { arabicLetters, latinLetters, diacritics };
}
console.log(analyzeText('بِسْمِ اللَّهِ'));
// { arabicLetters: 7, latinLetters: 0, diacritics: 5 }
console.log(analyzeText('Hello مرحبا'));
// { arabicLetters: 5, latinLetters: 5, diacritics: 0 }
Stripping diacritics while preserving letters
import { isArabicDiacritic } from 'bitaboom';
function stripDiacritics(text: string): string {
return Array.from(text)
.filter(char => !isArabicDiacritic(char))
.join('');
}
console.log(stripDiacritics('بِسْمِ اللَّهِ')); // بسم الله
Detecting script type
import { isArabicLetter, isLatinLetter } from 'bitaboom';
function detectScript(text: string): 'arabic' | 'latin' | 'mixed' | 'other' {
let hasArabic = false;
let hasLatin = false;
for (const char of text) {
if (isArabicLetter(char)) hasArabic = true;
if (isLatinLetter(char)) hasLatin = true;
}
if (hasArabic && hasLatin) return 'mixed';
if (hasArabic) return 'arabic';
if (hasLatin) return 'latin';
return 'other';
}
console.log(detectScript('مرحبا')); // arabic
console.log(detectScript('Hello')); // latin
console.log(detectScript('Hello مرحبا')); // mixed
These functions are optimized for single-character checks. For analyzing entire strings, consider using higher-level functions like getArabicScore from the arabic module.
When processing large amounts of text, cache the results if you’re checking the same characters repeatedly.