C++ strings: UTF-8 or 16-bit encoding?

Question

I\'m still trying to decide whether my (home) project should use UTF-8 strings (implemented in terms of std::string with additional UTF-8-specific functions when necessary) or s

Answer 1

UTF-16 is still a variable length character encoding (there are more than 2^16 unicode codepoints), so you can't do O(1) string indexing operations. If you're doing lots of that sort of thing, you're not saving anything in speed over UTF-8. On the other hand, if your text includes a lot of codepoints in the 256-65535 range, UTF-16 can be a substantial improvement in size. UCS-2 is a variation on UTF-16 that is fixed length, at the cost of prohibiting any codepoints greater than 2^16.

Without knowing more about your requirements, I would personally go for UTF-8. It's the easiest to deal with for all the reasons others have already listed.