MeridianMERIDIAN

Currency Symbol

finance.currency.currency_symbol

Unicode currency symbol character. Examples: $, €, £, ¥, ₹, ₩, ₿. Single character (or short sequence) representing a currency.

Casts to
VARCHAR

Shape

Pattern
^[\p{Sc}]+$
ValueLengthShape
$1not checked
€1not checked
£1not checked
¥1not checked
₹1not checked
₩1not checked
₿1not checked

pattern uses syntax this checker does not support

Background

Origin

In the Unicode Character Database, Sc is the abbreviated alias for the Currency_Symbol value of the General_Category property.[1] UAX #44 describes the Currency_Symbol category as a currency sign.[1] The Unicode Standard says currency symbols are intended to encode the customary symbolic signs used to indicate certain currencies in general text.[2] The Unicode Standard gives currency symbols their own block, Currency Symbols, at U+20A0..U+20CF.[2] The Unicode Standard lists U+0024 $ DOLLAR SIGN, U+00A3 £ POUND SIGN and U+00A5 ¥ YEN SIGN among the currency symbols encoded in other blocks.[2] Further currency symbols with the General_Category value Sc are found in the Small Form Variants and the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms blocks.[2]

The euro character is encoded in the Unicode Standard as U+20AC € EURO SIGN.[2] U+20B9 ₹ INDIAN RUPEE SIGN represents the currency symbol introduced by the Government of India in 2010 as the official symbol for the Indian rupee.[2] Unicode 6.0.0 added the Indian Rupee Sign, which its release page calls the new official Indian currency symbol.[3] Unicode 10.0.0 lists the Bitcoin sign among its important symbol additions.[4]

Use

The Unicode Standard notes that currency signs vary in shape and are often used for more than one currency.[2] According to the Unicode Standard, the dollar sign (U+0024) is used for many currencies in Latin America and elsewhere.[2] The Unicode Standard says U+00A5 ¥ YEN SIGN is intended to be the currency sign for both the yen and the yuan.[2] The Unicode Standard says U+00A3 £ POUND SIGN may be used both for the currencies known as pound and for the currencies known as lira.[2] The Unicode Standard treats glyph variants of a currency sign, such as a dollar sign with one or two vertical bars, as typographical and gives them a single encoding.[2] Not every currency has a special symbol, and the Unicode Standard gives Sfr for the Swiss franc as an example of a multiple-letter string used instead.[2]

The Unicode Standard advises that implementations concerned with the exact identity of a currency should not depend on an encoded currency sign character.[2] Where you can, map each symbol to an ISO 4217 code once, with the source's country or locale as context, and carry the code forward rather than the sign. (Meridian's view)

LDML warns that the narrow currency symbol may be ambiguous, because the same symbols may be used for multiple currencies.[5] LDML describes a pattern that combines a currency symbol with the ISO 4217 code to produce a result such as $1,432.00 USD.[5] When writing currency amounts, the location of the symbol varies by language.[6]

The Unicode Standard says currency symbols are commonly designed to display at the same width as a digit, to help align monetary values in tables.[2] When a symbol has been split out of an amount into its own column, keep it beside the amount it came from, because on its own it is a clue rather than an answer. (Meridian's view)

Sources

  1. [1]UAX #44: Unicode Character Databasestandard
  2. [2]Chapter 22 – Unicode 18.0.0standard
  3. [3]Unicode 6.0.0standard
  4. [4]Unicode 10.0.0standard
  5. [5]Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML) Part 3: Numbersstandard
  6. [6]Currency symbolsecondary source

Detection notes

v1 migration: Was finance.currency_symbol. Uses Unicode currency symbol category (\\p{Sc}). Short strings — typically 1 character. Low priority due to ambiguity ($ could be USD, AUD, CAD, etc.).

Use it

CLI · DuckDB
$ finetype infer -i "$" --mode column
→ finance.currency.currency_symbol

SELECT ft_infer('$');
-- → 'finance.currency.currency_symbol'
Cast expression
CAST({col} AS VARCHAR)

Schema

https://meridian.online/schemas/finance.currency.currency_symbol · Frictionless type string

finetype taxonomy finance.currency.currency_symbol -o json-schema

Aliases

currency_sign

Type Registry