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# normalize

> Reference for the normalize workflow task, which returns a string in a specified Unicode normalization form.

The `normalize` task normalizes a string, returning it in a specified Unicode normalization form:

| Value  | Definition                                                     |
| ------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `NFC`  | Canonical Decomposition, followed by Canonical Composition     |
| `NFD`  | Canonical Decomposition                                        |
| `NFKC` | Compatibility Decomposition, followed by Canonical Composition |
| `NFKD` | Compatible Decomposition                                       |

For more information, see the [Unicode Normalization Forms](http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/) standard.

In simple terms, normalization ensures that two strings that may use different binary representations for their characters have the same binary value after normalization.

## Potential use cases

Unicode sometimes has multiple representations of the same character. For example, the letter "é" can be represented using either `U+00E9` (a single code point) or `U+0065` and `U+0301` together (two code points). This can cause unexpected errors such as password mismatches that prevent user authentication, or the inability to search and sort email addresses in a database.

Use `normalize` whenever you need to convert characters with diacritical marks, change letter case, decompose ligatures, or convert half-width characters to full-width characters. To ensure data is stored and accessed consistently, normalize input whenever you accept it from users.

## Properties

| Incoming | Type   | Description                                                                       |
| -------- | ------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `str`    | String | Required. The string to normalize.                                                |
| `form`   | String | Optional. The Unicode normalization form to use: `NFC`, `NFD`, `NFKC`, or `NFKD`. |

| Outgoing           | Type   | Description                                                             |
| ------------------ | ------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `normalizedString` | String | A string containing the Unicode normalization form of the given string. |

## Example

The incoming `str` variable is `"Chloé O'Leary"` and the `form` value is `NFC`. Note the acute accent in the first name and the apostrophe in the last name.

![](/_fern-img/5ec8c1bd99e95e2dad2f560d918b54a9a8603eaebed2b31405db8e1764100e9b.webp)

The task returns a `normalizedString` as output.

![](/_fern-img/488550212fe56173662ca41d7cef7d8f23d7edb9372856951a13fdefac865b1c.webp)

> Reference for the normalize workflow task, which returns a string in a specified Unicode normalization form.