Re: Fixed length data types issue

On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 02:39:03PM -0400, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> mark(at)mark(dot)mielke(dot)cc wrote:
> > I think I've been involved in a discussion like this in the past. Was
> > it mentioned in this list before? Yes the UTF-8 vs UTF-16 encoding
> > means that UTF-8 applications are at a disadvantage when using the
> > library. UTF-16 is considered more efficient to work with for everybody
> > except ASCII users. :-)
> Uh, is it? By whom? And why?

The authors of the library in question? Java? Anybody whose primary
alphabet isn't LATIN1 based? :-)

Only ASCII values store more space efficiently in UTF-8. All values
over 127 store more space efficiently using UTF-16. UTF-16 is easier
to process. UTF-8 requires too many bit checks with single character
offsets. I'm not an expert - I had this question before a year or two
ago, and read up on the ideas of experts.

Cheers,
mark

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