alphabets/docs/index.md

title
Alphabets

A tiny JS dependency (<2kb!) which exports many alphabets for many use cases.

Why would I use this?

Why?

I have seen developers doing this:

const alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'.split('');

Or worse:

const alphabet = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m", "n", "o", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z"];

My opinion about this? 🙄. It's ugly, it makes your code less readable (read: ugly) and it's simply not something you should want to have in your code! Instead, you should do it like so:

import { latin } from 'alphabets';
// or
const alphabets = require('alphabets');

Much cleaner, right? That's why I made this package.

Why not?

I see very few reasons not to use this package.

But doesn't it cost me performance?

No. This package is only <800 bytes so it should not cost you any performance. Neither via CDN nor if you use a bundler like webpack, Parcel or Rollup.

Why not making an array on my own?

It's a choice. This whole package is opinionated. I think you should not do const alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'.split(''); in your code. I think you should use a package for that. Do you think it's OK to define your own alphabet array? Do that!

Competitors

Know more alternatives? Please open an issue or pull request! {: .notice--info}

alphabet

Seems a good alternative, right? But:

• It only supports the Latin alphabet.
• It is larger. (The size is equal to this package's size, but this package includes more.)
• It is only CommonJS and not ECMAScript etc.
• When did the author last update it? Right.

  

  Hmmm...

I do not say this package doesn't work. I think it will work perfectly, but it has less features. {: .notice--warning}

Usage

Installation

Use npm:

npm install alphabets --save

Or if you prefer Yarn:

yarn add alphabets

CDN, if that's more your style:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/alphabet@1/dist/bundle.js"></script>

Usage

import { <alphabetYouWantToUse> } from 'alphabets';

or:

const alphabets = require('alphabets');
console.log(alphabets.<alphabetYouWantToUse>);

where <alphabetYouWantToUse> is an alphabet this package supports. Here is a list from which you can choose.

API

Supported alphabets

Usage: see Usage.

Name	Export name
Danish	danish
Faroese	faroese
Greek (modern)	greek
Greek (ancient/polytonic)	greekPolytonic
Icelandic	icelandic
Latin	latin
Norwegian	norwegian
Swedish	swedish