TextWash

This page finds U+2212 MINUS SIGN (the typographic minus that is not a hyphen) and converts it to ASCII "-". The sample below fails float parsing. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

Input

X-ray hover a highlight for details

Cleaned output copied ✓

Cleaning rules

What is U+2212 (minus sign)?

The real typographic minus: same width as +, sits at the same height, looks better in math. It is also a completely different character from the ASCII hyphen-minus - (U+002D) that every programming language and parser expects for negative numbers.

Where it comes from

Wikipedia and other well-typeset references use U+2212 for negative values, macOS Calculator copies results with it, weather sites use it for sub-zero temperatures, and scientific software (and LaTeX-rendered content) emits it. Copy any of those numbers and the minus rides along.

What it breaks

Number parsing everywhere: Python's float("−5.2") raises ValueError, JavaScript's parseFloat returns NaN, spreadsheets store the "number" as text so sums silently skip it, SQL inserts fail or store junk, and CSV imports flag the column as non-numeric. The error is baffling because the value looks exactly right.

Fix it

Paste the numbers above — every minus sign (and nine other dash lookalikes) is highlighted and converted to a plain ASCII hyphen in the cleaned output. In your own code, a targeted text.replace("\u2212", "-") before parsing, or NFKC-based number normalization, fixes it at the source.