Variable-width encoding: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:17, 28 June 2007

Revision as of 23:18, 28 June 2007

Line 1:

{{otheruses4|the encoding of characters for the storage of text in computers|the [[coding theory]]transmission of transmitting data across noisy channels|Variablevariable-length code}}

A '''variable-width encoding''' is a type of [[character encoding]] scheme in which codes of differing lengths are used to encode a [[character set]] (a repertoire of symbols) for representation in a [[computer]]. Most common variable-width encodings are '''multibyte encodings''', which use varying numbers of [[byte]]s ([[octet (computing)|octet]]s) to encode different characters.

(Some authors, notably in Microsoft documentation, use the term ''multibyte character set,'' which is a [[misnomer]] since representation size is an attribute of the encoding, not of the character set.)