On Tue, 03 Jul 2012 12:00:53 -0000, "the_a_rioch" <ariochthe@...>
wrote:

>> In Java a string is a class, objects of which contain sequence of
>> characters, a character is a 16-bit value that can be casted to int.
>> They are UTF-16.
>
> How can char always be 16-bit if it is UTF-16 not UCS-2 ?

UTF-16 is the successor to UCS-2 (since July 1996!). It is by definition
16 bits (as in it is built from 2 byte code units). Some unicode characters
(code points) are defined by combining two UTF-16 code units.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16

But I don't see how UTF-16 is relevant: Firebird does not support UTF-16,
so selecting that as the default would be even worse than the current state
IMHO. And even though Java uses Unicode internally (using UTF-16), as far
as I know it is rare in the Java world to consider Java to be UTF-16, nor
would UTF-16 be the first choice for communication with other systems.

Mark