Re: Multibyte definition

From: Paul_Corriveau@candle.com
Date: Thu Mar 16 2000 - 13:29:30 EST


>> Can anyone tell be a precise definition of the word "multibyte" as referred
to in the standard C library?

This from Microsoft's Visual C++ C Language Reference: "A multibyte character is
a character composed of sequences of one or more bytes. Each byte sequence
represents a single character in the extended character set. "

>> What is the relationship between it and UTF-n encodings?

UTF-n are Unicode specific encoding forms use to serialize a Unicode value as a
sequence of one to four bytes ( UTF-8), or as a sequence of two bytes ( UTF-16,
UTF-16BE, UTF-16LE.) Is there a relationship between multibyte encodings and
the UTF's? Structurally, perhaps. Semantically, no.

An aside, the C Language Reference distinguishes between multibyte and wide
characters, the latter used to refer to the Unicode specification.

The Unicode Standard Version 3.0 is available from Addison / Wesley for 50
dollars US and is worth picking up.

Paul Corriveau



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