1.Previous
3.Next

UTF-8 and ASCII store strings as a sequence of 8-bit code points. With byte addressing, each code point can be placed in its own independently-addressable MAU with no overhead. With 32-bit word addressing, placing each code point in a separate MAU would increase the memory usage by 300%, which is not viable for programs that work with large amounts of text. Packing adjacent code points into a single word avoids this cost. However, many algorithms for working with text prefer to

1.Previous
3.Next