UTF-8 Byte Inspector: Decode Characters
Inspect the raw UTF-8 byte sequence of any text — useful for encoding issues and international character debugging.
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Tags: UTF-8 byte inspector, Unicode byte inspector, text encoding debugger
UTF-8 Byte Inspector: Decode Characters The UTF-8 byte inspector shows you the exact byte sequence that any text string produces when encoded as UTF-8 — the byte values in hexadecimal and decimal for every character, including multi-byte sequences. --- Why Raw Bytes Matter Every character-encoding bug has a root cause at the byte level. When you see garbled text (mojibake), a replacement character (U+FFFD, displayed as or ), or an unexpected string length, the answer is always in the bytes. Inspecting raw UTF-8 bytes helps with: Diagnosing encoding mismatches between systems (database, application server, browser). Debugging API responses where accented characters or emoji arrive as garbage. Understanding why in JavaScript returns 2 for a single emoji. Verifying that a BOM is or is not…
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I inspect UTF-8 bytes?
In JavaScript, use `new TextEncoder().encode(str)` to get a Uint8Array of bytes, then format each byte as a two-digit hex string. In Python, use `str.encode('utf-8')` to get a bytes object and iterate over it. A browser-based UTF-8 inspector shows you the hex and decimal byte values for every character.
What is UTF-8 encoding?
UTF-8 is a variable-width character encoding that represents every Unicode code point using one to four bytes. ASCII characters use one byte; characters in common scripts use two to three bytes; emoji and supplementary characters use four bytes. It is the dominant encoding on the web.
How do I debug character encoding issues?
Identify the symptoms: garbled text (mojibake), question marks, or replacement characters. Then trace the encoding at each step — when the data was written, how it was stored, and how it was read. The most common cause is reading UTF-8 bytes as Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) or vice versa.
What is a BOM (byte order mark)?
A BOM is the byte sequence 0xEF 0xBB 0xBF prepended to a UTF-8 file to identify its encoding. It is optional in UTF-8 and can cause problems when consumed by tools that don't expect it — notably, a BOM at the start of a CSV file breaks most parsers. Avoid adding BOMs to UTF-8 files unless required by a specific tool.
What is the difference between UTF-8 and UTF-16?
UTF-8 uses one to four bytes per character and is backward-compatible with ASCII, making it the default for web content and files. UTF-16 uses two or four bytes per character and is the internal string format in Java, C#, and JavaScript engines. UTF-16 requires a BOM or explicit endian declaration because it has big-endian and little-endian variants.
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