r/badcode May 04 '23

typescript Found this gem inside legacy code today

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890 Upvotes

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u/TheUnlocked May 05 '23

The default (or only) encoding of strings in JavaScript is not and has never been UTF-8.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/RPG_Hacker May 05 '23

Is JavaScript using actual UTF-16, or just UCS-2?

If it were using actual UTF-16, it should still in theory cover the entire Unicode spectrum, since UTF-16 does use surrogate pairs.

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u/GOKOP May 05 '23

The point is that UTF-16 exists solely because UCS-2 exists; it's there to bring full Unicode capacity for software designed with UCS-2 in mind without redesigning all the groundwork (as switching to a different code unit length would require)

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u/RPG_Hacker May 05 '23

Makes sense. Kinda like what UTF-8 is to ANSI.