If your text is always valid UTF-8, there are various illegal UTF-8 octets available for this purpose: 0xff, 0xfe, and so on. Unlike null terminators or record

If your text is always valid UTF-8, there are various illegal UTF-8 octets available for this purpose: 0xff, 0xfe, and so on. Unlike null terminators or record separator characters, these characters are guaranteed not to exist in your string by the UTF-8 validation code you're already running.