UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8-bit) is a variable-width character encoding used to represent every character in the Unicode character set. It is designed to be backward-compatible with ASCII and capable of encoding all possible characters, or code points, in Unicode.
UTF-8 encodes each Unicode character as one to four bytes. The first 128 characters of Unicode, which correspond to the ASCII character set, are encoded as single bytes, making UTF-8 compatible with ASCII. Characters beyond the ASCII set are encoded using multiple bytes, allowing UTF-8 to handle a vast range of characters from different languages and symbol sets.
Example: Here is an example of encoding and decoding a string using UTF-8 in JavaScript:
// Example string
const text = "Hello, 世界";
// Encoding the string to UTF-8
const encoder = new TextEncoder();
const encodedText = encoder.encode(text);
console.log(encodedText); // Output: Uint8Array containing UTF-8 encoded bytes
// Decoding the UTF-8 bytes back to string
const decoder = new TextDecoder('utf-8');
const decodedText = decoder.decode(encodedText);
console.log(decodedText); // Output: "Hello, 世界"
Explanation of the Example:
- TextEncoder: The
TextEncoderobject is used to encode a string into a Uint8Array of UTF-8 bytes.const encodedText = encoder.encode(text);converts the stringtextinto its UTF-8 byte representation. - TextDecoder: The
TextDecoderobject is used to decode a Uint8Array of UTF-8 bytes back into a string.const decodedText = decoder.decode(encodedText);converts the UTF-8 bytes back into the original string.