diff --git a/R/char_to_.R b/R/char_to_.R
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..124df0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/R/char_to_.R
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+# These functions return ascii representations of extended or unicode
+# characters using hex or unicode R escape strings
+
+char_to_hex <- function(x) {
+  cat(paste0("\"", paste0("\\x", charToRaw(x), collapse = ""), "\""))
+}
+
+char_to_unicode <- function(x) {
+  cat(paste0("\"\\U", format(as.hexmode(utf8ToInt(x)), width = 8, upper = TRUE), "\""))
+}