Karakterkodninger

Karakterkodninger, also known as character encodings, are systems used to represent characters, such as letters, numbers, and symbols, as a sequence of bytes. Computers fundamentally understand binary data, so character encodings provide a bridge between human-readable text and the machine-readable format.

Different character encodings exist because various languages and scripts have unique sets of characters. Early encodings, like ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), were developed for English and used a 7-bit system to represent 128 characters. As the need arose to represent characters from other languages, more extensive encodings were developed.

One of the most significant developments was Unicode, a universal character encoding standard designed to encompass all characters from all writing systems in the world, as well as symbols and emojis. Unicode assigns a unique number, called a code point, to each character. However, Unicode itself is a standard, not a specific encoding.

To store and transmit Unicode characters, various encoding schemes are used, such as UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. UTF-8 is currently the most widely used encoding on the internet. It is a variable-length encoding, meaning it uses a different number of bytes to represent different characters, making it efficient for both English text and characters from other languages. UTF-16 uses two or four bytes per character, while UTF-32 uses four bytes for every character. The choice of encoding can impact file size, processing efficiency, and compatibility. Understanding character encodings is crucial for correct text display and data integrity.