UTF-8 vs ASCII

On 4/26/06, Prasanth <dbadmin(at)nqadmin(dot)com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Seems like by default database is created using UTF-8 when we use
> createdb in 8.1.3.
>
> Is there any big advantage of using UTF-8 rather than ASCII? Will there
> be any performance difference when performing string operations?
>
> Does the string functions convert every thing to UTF-8 before performing
> the operations?
>
> Surely it is going to increase by database size if we switch to UTF-8.
>
> All the characters in my database should be ASCII. I use JDBC so will
> there be any performance gain as the JDBC does not have to perform the
> conversion?

Perhaps you are confusing UTF-8 and UTF-16?

UTF-8 is a strict superset of ASCII with the same physical encoding
for ASCII characters.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8

(and BTW, your email address bounced)