than the length of the code unit, such as above 256 for eight-bit units, the solution was to implement variable-length encodings where an escape sequence would signal that subsequent bits should be parsed as a higher code point.

Terminology

The various terms related to character encoding are often used inconsistently or incorrectly. Historically, the same standard would specify a repertoire of characters and how they were to be encoded into a stream of code units - usually with

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