Code unit

A code unit is the basic component used by a character encoding system (such as UTF-8 or UTF-16). A character encoding system uses one or more code units to encode a Unicode code point.

In UTF-8, each code point is encoded using between one and four 8-bit code units.

In UTF-16, each code point is encoded using one or two 16-bit code units.

See also

• Code point
• UTF-8
• UTF-16
• Unicode encoding FAQ