utf-8 has an elegance that utf-16 lacks: utf-8 decode switch (std::countl_one(unit)) { case 0: /* one unit */ break;

utf-8 has an elegance that utf-16 lacks: utf-8 decode switch (std::countl_one(unit)) { case 0: /* one unit */ break; case 2: /* two units */ break; case 3: /* three units */ break; case 4: /* four units */ break; default: /* not code point boundary */ break; }