UTF-8 vs UTF-16: Which Encoding Should Your App Use?
UTF-8 uses 1–4 bytes per character and is ideal for web and files. UTF-16 uses 2–4 bytes and is used internally by Java, JavaScript, and Windows.
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Tags: encoding, unicode, developer-tools
UTF-8 vs UTF-16: Which Encoding Should Your App Use? UTF-8 and UTF-16 both encode the full Unicode character set. They cover the same characters. The difference is entirely in how they store those characters as bytes — and that difference has real consequences for file size, performance, string operations, and compatibility. This guide gives you the practical comparison to make the right choice. --- The Core Difference UTF-8 uses 1–4 bytes per character, with 1 byte for ASCII characters (U+0000–U+007F). UTF-16 uses 2–4 bytes per character, with 2 bytes for the most common characters (the BMP, U+0000–U+FFFF) and 4 bytes (surrogate pairs) for supplementary characters like emoji. --- File Size: It Depends on Your Content ASCII-heavy content (English text, source code, HTML, JSON, CSV): UTF-8…
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