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Joe Sam Shirah

UTF stands for a Unicode Transformation Format, which "is an algorithmic mapping from every Unicode scalar value to a unique byte sequence." UTF-8 is probably the most common transformation. For information, see:

• UTF & BOM
• RFC 2279: UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646
• Unicode Transformation Formats: UTF-8 & Co.
• UTF-8 and Unicode Standards
• UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ for Unix/Linux

For some general tutorials and information on encoding, see:

• Character Encodings Concepts
• A tutorial on character code issues

There are also a number of FAQ questions that deal with encoding. See:

• How do I convert a String from Unicode to another encoding and vice versa?
• If an HTML form encoded in UTF-8 is presented...
• How can I store and retrieve Unicode or Double Byte data in a file using the java.io libraries?
• How do I set a default character encoding for file I/O operations, JDBC requests and so on?

Searching for ( or scanning the printable version ) for "UTF" and "encoding" will produce even more questions.