Unicode & UTF-8

Code Points · UTF-8 Bytes · Encodings

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How Unicode assigns every character on Earth a number, and how UTF-8 turns those numbers into bytes — compactly, backwards-compatibly, and self-synchronizingly.

By the end, you can

Explain the difference between a Unicode code point and a UTF-8 encoding.
State the Unicode code space range and total size.
Convert a code point to its UTF-8 byte count using the four range boundaries.
Decode the lead-bits pattern of any UTF-8 byte (start vs. continuation, byte count).
Trace the encoding of a specific character such as € (U+20AC) into its UTF-8 bytes.
Explain why every ASCII file is valid UTF-8 without any conversion.
Distinguish UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32 in terms of unit size, byte-order sensitivity, and trade-offs.
Identify why byte length, code-point count, and grapheme-cluster count can all differ for the same string.
Diagnose mojibake and explain what fix is needed.

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