UTF stands for “Unicode Transformation Format.” It is a character encoding standard that assigns unique numeric codes to each character in a wide range of writing systems, languages, and symbols. The Unicode standard provides a way to represent and handle text in various scripts and languages across different computing platforms and applications.
There are several UTF formats, including:
- UTF-8: It uses variable-length encoding, which means that characters are represented using different numbers of bytes based on their Unicode code points. ASCII characters are represented using one byte, while other characters may require two to four bytes.
- UTF-16: It uses a fixed length of two bytes for most characters, and four bytes for characters with larger code points. It’s commonly used in Microsoft Windows systems and is used to represent characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) with two bytes and characters outside the BMP with four bytes.
- UTF-32: Also known as UCS-4, it uses a fixed length of four bytes for all characters. It can represent any character in the Unicode standard using a single code unit.
UTF formats allow computers and software to represent, store, and exchange text in a standardized and consistent manner, regardless of the script or language being used. This is particularly important in today’s globalized world where digital content is shared across various languages and writing systems.