What is the history of string encoding?

What is the history of string encoding?

String encoding has evolved significantly over the years, starting from simple ASCII to complex encodings like UTF-8. ASCII was developed in the 1960s and could represent 128 characters. As the internet grew, the need for more characters led to the development of UTF-8, which can represent over a million characters.

What are some common string encoding formats?

Some common string encoding formats include ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, and ISO-8859-1. Each has its own use cases depending on the character set required.

Why is UTF-8 so popular?

UTF-8 is popular because it is backward compatible with ASCII, can represent any character in the Unicode standard, and is efficient in terms of storage for English text.

What challenges are associated with string encoding?

Challenges include data corruption due to mismatched encodings, loss of information when converting between formats, and the complexity of handling multiple languages.