from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
UCS transformation format
UTF
<standard, character> (UTF) A set of standard {character
encodings} in accordance with {ISO 10646}.
One of a set of standard character encodings, the most widely
used of which are UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. The code tables
in ISO 10646 and in the {Unicode} standard are identical,
although the Unicode standard includes additional material.
UTF-8 is the most widely used encoding, at least on {Unix}
systems. Since it does not include any bytes like '\0' or '/'
which have a special meaning in filenames and other {C}
library function parameters, and 7-bit ASCII characters have
the same encoding under both {ASCII} and UTF-8, the required
changes to existing software are minimised.
Other UTFs: UTF-1 and UTF-7 are not widely used.
UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ for Unix/Linux
(http://cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#ucs).
(2002-01-15)