Unicode and UTF-8 Locale Support

Text strings in a computer are represented as sequence of character codes. A character set is a mapping between a character and the character code. The character set used for encoding strings is one of the most important characteristics of a locale. This chapter describes character sets used in Oracle Solaris locales and also the data source used for their creation. It covers the following topics:

• Unicode Overview

• Common Locale Data Repository

• Locales With Non-UTF-8 Character Sets

• Migrating From Non-UTF-8 Locales to UTF-8 Locales

Using the wrong character set to display a string often results in broken output. Therefore sometimes it is necessary to convert strings in order to use a different character set. Such conversions are described in Migrating From Non-UTF-8 Locales to UTF-8 Locales.