Uint8Array to string conversion difference between Firefox and Chromium

Question

I'm trying to convert binary data to string like this:

var string = new TextDecoder("utf-8").decode(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]));

When I look for what variable string returns in Firefox, it shows expected string "\u0001\u0002\u0003"

Although when I do the same in Chrome, string returns an empty string ""

Can someone, please, explain, what's going on?

Answer 1

Chrome console renders unprintable characters differently than firefox. Specifically, unprintable characters are rendered as the empty square. Nonetheless the string consists of the proper unicode code points.

The following one-liner (well ...) creates the \u... rendering.

Array.from(
    {length: string.length}
  , (v, k) => k
)
   .map ( idx => `\\u${string.codePointAt(idx).toString(16).padStart(4, '0')}`)
   .join()
;

Test it:

let string = new TextDecoder("utf-8").decode(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]));

console.log(`raw rep: '${string}'.`);
console.log(`code point rep: '${Array.from(
    {length: string.length}
  , (v, k) => k).map ( idx => `\\u${string.codePointAt(idx).toString(16).padStart(4, '0')}` 
).join("")}'.`);