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Re:Ftfy – fix Unicode that's broken in various ways by xstartup on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @05:52AM (#16105108)
Do you've any idea whether it's possible to search invisible characters using google?
Re:Ftfy – fix Unicode that's broken in various ways by cosmie on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:16PM (#16110167)
I'm not sure, but Google Search in general strips punctuation that isn't specifically designated as a search operator[1], and likely strips control/non-printing characters in a similar manner. Testing it[2] with a few URL-encoded control and invisible characters[3], they seem to be ignored. But they do make it into the query parameter, at least until you edit it for a subsequent search, at which point they get converted into spaces/+ symbols in the query.

[1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

[2] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="%0B%08+Foo+%7F"

[3] You can see the full string being searched here, it's 7 characters long: https://r12a.github.io/uniview/?charlist=%08%20Foo%20%7F