Exorcising the Unicode Daemons

Cursor was sloppy. Windsurf left ghosts. Both sprinkled invisible junk - spaces you couldn’t see, blank lines padded with nothing but air, curly quotes that tripped compilers. Annoying, but tolerable. Though the linter would sometimes detect “Unexpected indentation errors” due to invisible white space at the beginning of the line.

That’s why I moved to Codex. For writing code, Codex is in a different league: sharper edits, minimal noise, usually one or two tweaks and the problem is solved. If you’re coding in C, C++, Java, or Python, it’s a workhorse.

But paste text from Codex into a document? That’s when the daemons crawl out. Zero-width spaces. Phantom EOFs. Smart quotes masquerading as ASCII. Unicode ellipses sneaking into config files. Copy, paste, save - and suddenly your linter is screaming like it’s in a horror movie.

So UnicodeFix had to evolve. This release is the exorcism.

The Arms Race Gets Real

This isn’t just about formatting. It’s escalation.

  • AI tools keep evolving new “tells” with every update.
  • Professors and reviewers are catching on - flagging assignments by the accent of smart quotes or hidden spaces.
  • Some seed honeypots: invisible characters planted in starter code to trip up the careless.
  • Linters? They’re the bouncers at the gate. And if you’ve ever had your C++ homework fail on a missing semicolon, you know they don’t forgive easy.

UnicodeFix flips the balance. It doesn’t just clean - it exorcises.

The power of UnicodeFix compels you!

The CodExorcism Release

This edition banishes the latest wave of daemons:

  • Ellipsis Eradication - normalize … into …
  • Smart Quote Sanity - preserve for prose (-Q) or flatten for code
  • Dash Discipline - keep em/en dashes (-D) or crush to reliable ASCII hyphens
  • EOF Safety in VS Code - no phantom newlines wrecking your builds
  • Expanded Unicode Purge - spaces, joiners, BOMs, zero-width controls - torched

It’s not just cleaning. It’s ritual. Call it CodExorcism.

Why It Matters

Because this is about trust.

  • Your professor doesn’t care how pretty your C looked in VS Code - if it won’t compile, you fail.
  • Your linter doesn’t care that Codex thought it was stylish - it only cares that invisible junk broke syntax.
  • Your reviewer doesn’t care that your prose was smartly quoted - if it looks machine-generated, it loses credibility.

UnicodeFix restores control. Your work looks human, predictable, clean.

But use it wisely. Sometimes you need Unicode: math symbols, linguistics, even intentional watermarks. That’s what -i is for - keep what matters, torch the rest.

Real-World Survival

  • Coders: Clean C/C++/Java before turning it in. No phantom errors.
  • Writers: Strip AI tells before publishing.
  • Students: Make sure your work looks hand-typed at 4:37 a.m. instead of LLM spawn.
  • Everyone else: Emails, configs, markdown - if it’s text, UnicodeFix keeps it human.

How to Get It

You don’t need a tutorial here - the repo has everything. Install once, use it everywhere: CLI, Finder Quick Action, Vim, VS Code. Full docs, installation instructions, and screenshots are in the repo.

Side Note on Speed

I built a big chunk of this release using Willow Voice, a Whisper-powered dictation tool for macOS. Dictation doubled my velocity - narrating tests, logging fixes, even drafting posts like this one. If you want to try it, here’s my referral: get one month free, and it helps me out too. Everyone wins. (Link in the repo.)

Support & Priorities

UnicodeFix works beautifully today. A packaged macOS app (drag-and-drop, bundled Python, zero setup) is on the roadmap - but indie projects move by demand.

If this tool saved your bacon (or kept your professor off your back), fueling development helps:

One coffee = one more tool released into the wild.

Codex summoned the Unicode daemons. UnicodeFix cast them out. Until the next round of the arms race - enjoy the silence.