UCS transformation format definition

<standard, character> (UTF) A set of standard character encodings in accordance with ISO 10646.

One of a set of standard character encodings, the most widely used of which are UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. The code tables in ISO 10646 and in the Unicode standard are identical, although the Unicode standard includes additional material.

UTF-8 is the most widely used encoding, at least on Unix systems. Since it does not include any bytes like '\0' or '/' which have a special meaning in filenames and other C library function parameters, and 7-bit ASCII characters have the same encoding under both ASCII and UTF-8, the required changes to existing software are minimised.

Other UTFs: UTF-1 and UTF-7 are not widely used.

UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ for Unix/Linux.

Acronym: UTF

(01 Jul 2002)