U+002A Asterisk
U+002A was added in Unicode version 1.1 in 1993. It belongs to the block Basic Latin in the Basic Multilingual Plane.
This character is a Other Punctuation and is commonly used, that is, in no specific script. The character is also known as star.
The glyph is not a composition. Its East Asian Width is narrow. In bidirectional text it acts as Other Neutral. When changing direction it is not mirrored. The word that U+002A forms with similar adjacent characters prevents a line break inside it. The glyph can be confused with 4 other glyphs.
The CLDR project calls this character “asterisk” for use in screen reading software. It assigns these additional labels, e.g. for search in emoji pickers: star, wildcard.
This character is designated as an emoji. It will be rendered as monochrome character on conforming platforms. To enable colorful emoji display, you can combine it with Variation Selector-16: *️ See the Emojipedia for more details on this character’s emoji properties.
The Wikipedia has the following information about this codepoint:
The asterisk ( *), from Late Latin asteriscus, from Ancient Greek ἀστερίσκος, asteriskos, "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra). An asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in print and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten, though more complex forms exist. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words.
In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication.
Representations
| System | Representation |
|---|---|
| Nº | 42 |
| UTF-8 | 2A |
| UTF-16 | 00 2A |
| UTF-32 | 00 00 00 2A |
| URL-Quoted | %2A |
| HTML hex reference | * |
| HTML named entity | * |
| HTML named entity | * |
| alias | star |
| Encoding: ASCII (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: BIG5 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: BIG5HKSCS (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP037 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP273 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP424 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP437 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP500 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP720 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP737 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP775 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP850 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP852 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP855 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP856 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP857 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP858 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP860 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP861 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP862 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP863 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP864 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP865 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP866 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP869 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP874 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP875 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP932 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP949 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP950 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1006 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1026 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1125 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1140 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1250 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1251 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1252 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1253 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1254 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1255 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1256 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1257 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP1258 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: EUC_JP (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: EUC_JIS_2004 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: EUC_JISX0213 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: EUC_KR (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: GB2312 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: GBK (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: GB18030 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: HZ (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO2022_JP (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO2022_JP_1 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO2022_JP_2 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO2022_JP_2004 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO2022_JP_3 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO2022_JP_EXT (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO2022_KR (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: LATIN_1 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_2 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_3 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_4 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_5 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_6 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_7 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_8 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_9 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_10 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_11 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_13 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_14 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_15 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: ISO8859_16 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: JOHAB (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: KOI8_R (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: KOI8_T (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: KOI8_U (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: KZ1048 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: MAC_CYRILLIC (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: MAC_GREEK (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: MAC_ICELAND (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: MAC_LATIN2 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: MAC_ROMAN (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: MAC_TURKISH (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: PTCP154 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: SHIFT_JIS (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: SHIFT_JIS_2004 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: SHIFT_JISX0213 (hex bytes) | 2A |
| Encoding: CP037 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1025 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1047 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1097 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1112 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1122 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1123 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1140 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1141 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1142 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1143 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1144 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1145 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1146 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1147 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1148 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1148MS (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP1149 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP273 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP277 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP278 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP280 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP284 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP285 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP290 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP297 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP420 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP424 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP500 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP500MS (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP833 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP838 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP870 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP871 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| Encoding: CP875 (hex bytes) | 5C |
| LATEX | \ast |
| AGL: Latin-1 | asterisk |
| AGL: Latin-2 | asterisk |
| AGL: Latin-3 | asterisk |
| AGL: Latin-4 | asterisk |
| AGL: Latin-5 | asterisk |
| Adobe Glyph List | asterisk |
| digraph | * |
Related Characters
Confusables
Elsewhere
Complete Record
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| 1.1 (1993) | |
| ASTERISK | |
| — | |
| Basic Latin | |
| Other Punctuation | |
| Common | |
| Other Neutral | |
| Not Reordered | |
| none | |
| Asterisk | |
| ✘ | |
| Asterisk | |
| Asterisk | |
| ✘ | |
| Asterisk | |
| Asterisk | |
| Asterisk | |
| Asterisk | |
| Asterisk | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✔ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✔ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| Asterisk | |
| Any | |
| ✔ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| ✘ | |
| None | |
| — | |
| NA | |
| Other | |
| — | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| Yes | |
| Yes | |
| Asterisk | |
| Yes | |
| Asterisk | |
| Yes | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✔ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| Other | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| Other | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| ✘ | |
| Asterisk | |
| None | |
| narrow | |
| Not Applicable | |
| — | |
| No_Joining_Group | |
| Non Joining | |
| Alphabetic | |
| none | |
| not a number | |
| Asterisk | |
| R |