• UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32: A Comprehensive Analysis by Grok 3
    • UTF-8:
      • Fully compatible with ASCII, meaning an ASCII file is also a valid UTF-8 file. This allows legacy programs, like C’s printf, to handle UTF-8-encoded files containing only ASCII characters, as they look for ASCII-specific characters like ’%‘.
    • UTF-16 and UTF-32:
      • Not compatible with ASCII files, requiring Unicode-aware programs to display, print, or manipulate them, even if the file contains only ASCII characters.
      • Contain many zero bytes, which can break common null-terminated string handling logic (e.g., in C/C++), making them incompatible with legacy systems that rely on such logic.