ASCII vs Unicode Explained
What Unicode adds over ASCII, which encoding to use, and the practical pitfalls.
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Tools in this guide
Short answer
ASCII = 128 characters (English + control). Unicode = 154,000+ characters (every living language). Modern default is UTF-8.
Tools
- Unicode Inspector shows bytes and code points of any string
- Charset Fixer repairs mojibake
- Case Converter handles cross-script casing
Pitfalls
- Display width ≠ byte length (emoji: 1 code point = 4 UTF-8 bytes)
- JS string.length is UTF-16 code units
- Default encoding varies by toolchain
Note
UTF-8 is the web default. Use UTF-8 unless you have a legacy reason not to.
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How to use
Open the tool
Open the relevant tool linked below in your browser. The page handles everything client-side.
Frequently asked
Does this upload my file?
No. All ToolConvoy tools process files in your browser; nothing is uploaded to a server.
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