Variable-width encoding

A variable-width encoding is a type of character encoding scheme in which codes of differing lengths are used to encode a character set (a repertoire of symbols) for representation in a computer. Most common variable-width encodings are multibyte encodings, which use varying numbers of bytes (octets) to encode different characters.

Related Topics:
Character encoding - Character set - Computer - Byte - Octet

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Early variable width encodings using less than a byte per character were sometimes used to pack english text into less bytes in adventure games for early microcomputers. However disks (which unlike tapes allowed random access allowing text to be loaded on demand), increases in computer memory and general purpose compression algorithms have rendered such tricks largely redundant.

Related Topics:
Adventure game - Microcomputers - Disk - Compression algorithm

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Multibyte encodings are usually the result of a need to increase the number of characters which can be encoded without breaking backward compatibility with an existing constraint. For example, with one byte (8 bits) per character, one can encode 256 possible characters; in order to encode more than 256 characters, the obvious choice would be to use two or more bytes per encoding unit, two bytes (16 bits) would allow 65,536 possible characters, but such a change would break compatibility with existing systems and therefore might not be feasible at all.

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