A Java char can hold any valid UCS-2 character, i.e. U+0000 to U+FFFF. If you need to use, say, U+1F4A9, you can't represent that with a char, so you need to us

A Java char can hold any valid UCS-2 character, i.e. U+0000 to U+FFFF. If you need to use, say, U+1F4A9, you can't represent that with a char, so you need to use an int to hold that codepoint. A cursory glance at Java's string and character APIs reveals an awful lot of duplication between char-based "character at" and int-based "codepoint at" methods, with the former being a) broken and b) largely undeprecated despite being clearly broken.