UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32: Encoding Methods

Unicode Transformation Formats (UTF):

Unicode defines WHAT each character's code is. UTF defines HOW to store those codes in bytes.

UTF-8 (Most Common):

• Variable length: 1 to 4 bytes per character
• ASCII compatible: ASCII characters still use 1 byte (efficient!)
• English text: 1 byte per character (same size as ASCII)
• Accented letters: 2 bytes (é, ñ, ü)
• Chinese/Japanese: 3 bytes per character
• Emoji: 4 bytes
• Advantages: Efficient for English, backward compatible with ASCII
• Disadvantage: Asian languages take 3× more space than UTF-16

UTF-16:

• Variable length: 2 or 4 bytes per character
• Most characters: 2 bytes (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
• Emoji & rare: 4 bytes (surrogate pairs)
• Use case: Windows internals, Java, JavaScript strings
• Advantage: Efficient for Asian languages
• Disadvantage: English takes 2× space vs ASCII/UTF-8

UTF-32:

• Fixed length: Exactly 4 bytes per character (always)
• Advantage: Simple - every character same size, easy indexing
• Disadvantage: Wastes space - 'A' takes 4 bytes (0x00000041)
• Use case: Internal processing where speed > space