How does UTF-8 differ from UTF-16 in character ... - SS3 ICT Data Representation Question

UTF-8 and UTF-16 are both character encoding schemes used in Unicode. The primary difference between them is how they represent characters:

 

UTF-8: It uses a variable-length encoding, with characters represented using 8, 16, or 24 bits. Commonly used characters, like those in the ASCII set, are represented with 8 bits (1 byte), making it backward compatible with ASCII. This results in more efficient storage for predominantly English text but can require more bytes for less common characters.

 

UTF-16: It uses a fixed-length encoding with 16 bits (2 bytes) for most characters. This means that all characters, including ASCII characters, are represented using 16 bits. UTF-16 is more space-efficient for languages that predominantly use 16-bit characters but can be less efficient for languages with simpler character sets.