normalize(): equivalent text with different Unicode representations

In a few sentences

In brief

Normalization helps when comparing equivalent sequences.

Useful to know

In Unicode, a visually uniform letter can be represented by a different sequence of code points . normalize() returns a normalized form, by default NFC. For example, the composite letter é and e with a combination accent can be aligned by NFC. [1]

This is different from removing accents or converting to lowercase letters. In search and identifiers, determine what equivalence you actually want. Do not change the original spelling unnecessarily: you can keep the original and a separate normalized key for the specific operation.

Sources

For further detail and to check the information:

[1] MDN — String.normalize ↗