removePersianDiacritics

⚠️ Version Recommendation: Always install and use the latest version of rtl-text-tools (npm install rtl-text-tools@latest). While this specific feature was introduced in an earlier version, the latest release includes crucial bug fixes, better edge-case handling, and improved legacy browser compatibility. Avoid pinning your project to an old version just to use this function.

Removes Arabic diacritics (Harakat / E'rab) from the text.

Persian rarely uses vowel marks (Fatha, Kasra, Damma, Sukun, etc.) in standard writing. This function strips them out to leave the clean, base text, which is highly useful for search indexing, text comparison, and normalizing user input.

⚠️ Important Warning: Do not use this function if you are processing Quranic texts, classical poetry, or children's books where vowel marks are strictly required for correct pronunciation and meaning.

📝 Syntax

removePersianDiacritics(text: string): string

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
text	string	The text containing Arabic diacritics to remove.

Returns

• string : Returns the text with all diacritics in the \u064B to \u065F range stripped out. Returns the original string unchanged if it is empty, null, or contains no diacritics.

💡 Examples

Basic Usage

import { removePersianDiacritics } from 'rtl-text-tools';

removePersianDiacritics("مُحَمَّد");       // "محمد"
removePersianDiacritics("اَلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ");  // "الحمد لله"
removePersianDiacritics("شَجَرَةٌ");        // "شجرة" (Teh Marbuta is kept, only diacritics removed)
removePersianDiacritics("بدون اعراب");      // "بدون اعراب" (No diacritics = unchanged)

Search and Text Comparison

When building a search feature for Persian or Arabic, users will almost never type diacritics. Stripping diacritics from your database content ensures that searches match regardless of how the text was originally vocalized:

import { removePersianDiacritics } from 'rtl-text-tools';

const databaseText = "كِتَابٌ مُفِيدٌ"; // Vocalized text from a database
const userQuery = "کتاب مفید";          // User typed without diacritics

const normalizedDB = removePersianDiacritics(databaseText); // "كتاب مفيد"
const normalizedQuery = removePersianDiacritics(userQuery); // "کتاب مفید"

// Note: You might also want to combine this with normalizePersianChars() 
// to handle the Yeh/Kaf differences before comparing!

🌍 Removed Diacritics (Unicode Range)

This function targets the Unicode block from \u064B to \u065F, which includes the most common Arabic vowel marks and signs:

Character	Name	Unicode
ً	Fathatan	\u064B
ٌ	Dammatan	\u064C
ٍ	Kasratan	\u064D
َ	Fatha	\u064E
ُ	Damma	\u064F
ِ	Kasra	\u0650
ّ	Shadda	\u0651
ْ	Sukun	\u0652
(and others)	Small high ligatures, Maddah, etc.	\u0653 - \u065F

⚙️ Technical Details & Compatibility

• Regex Character Class: The function uses a highly efficient regular expression (/[\u064B-\u065F]/g) to match the entire range of diacritics in a single pass, replacing them with an empty string ''.
• Base Characters Preserved: It strictly targets the combining marks. Base letters (like Alef, Ba, Teh Marbuta, etc.) are completely untouched.
• IE11 Compatibility: It avoids modern string methods and the ES6 u regex flag, ensuring full compatibility with legacy browsers like IE11.
• Safe Execution: If the input is falsy (e.g., null, undefined, or ""), it immediately returns the input without throwing an error.

📜 Version History

• v1.2.0: Added removePersianDiacritics() as part of the Persian language enhancements to clean up text for search and normalization.