How many bytes does the char type occupy in Java?

The char type in Java occupies 2 bytes. The char type byte is related to the character set we use. If the ASCII encoding set is used, then char occupies one byte. If the UTF8 encoding format is used, then char Takes up two bytes.

char was used to store characters when it was originally designed. However, there are so many characters in the world. If there is 1 byte, it means that only It is obviously inappropriate to store 256, and if there are two bytes, then 2^16 (65536) can be stored. This number is in line with the number of language characters in most countries, so the Java team uses unicode as the encoding, a char Stored as 2 bytes.

But unicode is just a standard, and the specific implementation still includes encodings such as UTF-8 or UTF-16.

Is Java’s char necessarily 2 bytes?

Not necessarily, it has something to do with the character set we use. If we use the ASCII encoding set, then char occupies one byte. What if we use UTF-8 encoding format? UTF-8 is a variable-length encoding, and the length of the encoding is dynamic, so it is not necessarily certain.

Can char store Chinese characters?

This problem still comes down to the encoding set used. If ASCII is used, it will definitely not be stored. If UTF-8 is used, it will be OK.

Summary

The length of char and whether it can store Chinese characters are related to the encoding format. For cross-platform encoding when encoding, we should set the corresponding format during encoding and decoding to prevent exceptions caused by encoding and decoding.

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