code point

See also: codepoint

English

Alternative forms

• codepoint

Noun

code point (plural code points)

1. (computing, especially Unicode) A numerical offset in a character set, etc., as opposed to a displayed grapheme or character, which can be composed of several code points.

   Synonym: (ISO) code position

   In UTF-8, the number of bytes used to write a character to a file depends on the Unicode code point.

   • 2009, Jan Goyvaerts, Steven Levithan, Regular Expressions Cookbook, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 45:

     A code point is one entry in the Unicode character database. A code point is not the same as a character, depending on the meaning you give to “character.” What appears as a character on screen is called a grapheme in Unicode.

   • 2020, Randall Hyde, Write Great Code, 2nd edition, volume 1, No Starch Press, →ISBN, page 102:

     Today, Unicode defines 1,112,064 code points, far exceeding the 2-byte capacity originally set aside for Unicode characters. A Unicode code point is simply an integer value that Unicode associates with a particular character symbol; you can think of it as the Unicode equivalent of the ASCII code for a character.

Translations

numerical offset in a character set

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 碼點／码点 (mǎdiǎn)

• Esperanto: kodono, kodvorto, signonumero
• Finnish: koodipaikka
• French: point de code (fr) m
• German: Codepoint m, Codepunkt m
• Vietnamese: điểm mã, mã số (vi)

See also

• codespace
• combining character, combining mark
• grapheme, grapheme cluster

References

• “code point”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• code point on Wikipedia.Wikipedia