Character Encoding: how to check whether the character is single byte or multiple byte

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

Hi
I have a doubt regarding single byte and multiple byte character. I have seen somewhere how to check whether the character is single byte, double byte , triple byte but didn't get it.
Let b is the character we need to check
For single byte character: b & 0x80 == 0x00;
For double byte character: b & 0xE0 == 0xC0;
For triple byte character: b & 0xF0 == 0xE0;

Can anyone please explain the logic behind these.

Thanks in advance.

Posted 14-Jul-14 20:15pm

Rahul@puna

Add a Solution

2 solutions

Solution 1

What you can do is to use

C#

int noOfBytes = sizeof(b)

Then you will know how many bytes b requires.

You can find more information here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_encoding[^]

And here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16[^]

Posted 14-Jul-14 20:32pm

George Jonsson

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

CPallini · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-14T20:56:00

See the UTF-8 encoding at Wikipedia[^]. According to the table, (the first byte of) a single byte character has the most significant bit cleared (0). You may test such a condition by ANDing such byte with 0x80 (that is 10000000 in binary).
Similarly, all two-byte characters starts with the 110 marker and you can test it by b & 0xE0 == 0xC0 (that is b & 11100000b == 11000000b ).
And so on.