Character
Character - quick reference
In computing, a character is any unit of text assigned a code point in an encoding standard. This includes visible glyphs like A (code 65) and $ (code 36), but also invisible ones like line feed (code 10) and null (code 0).
One common mistake: a character is not always one byte. In UTF-8, ASCII characters take 1 byte, accented Latin characters take 2 bytes, CJK ideographs take 3 bytes, and emoji take 4 bytes. And a character is not always one code point either - the flag emoji for a country uses two code points (regional indicator symbols). These distinctions matter when calculating string length, truncating text, or splitting at character boundaries. Explore all 128 ASCII characters or browse by category: control, printable, symbols.
One common mistake: a character is not always one byte. In UTF-8, ASCII characters take 1 byte, accented Latin characters take 2 bytes, CJK ideographs take 3 bytes, and emoji take 4 bytes. And a character is not always one code point either - the flag emoji for a country uses two code points (regional indicator symbols). These distinctions matter when calculating string length, truncating text, or splitting at character boundaries. Explore all 128 ASCII characters or browse by category: control, printable, symbols.