code point meaning: definition, quotations

code point

noun

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A numerical offset in a character set, etc., as opposed to a displayed grapheme or character, which can be composed of several code points.

Especially Unicode

In UTF-8, the number of bytes used to write a character to a file depends on the Unicode code point.
A code point is one entry in the Unicode character database. A code point is not the same as a character, depending on the meaning you give to “character.” What appears as a character on screen is called a grapheme in Unicode.2009, Jan Goyvaerts, Steven Levithan, Regular Expressions Cookbook, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 45:

1 more example

Today, Unicode defines 1,112,064 code points, far exceeding the 2-byte capacity originally set aside for Unicode characters. A Unicode code point is simply an integer value that Unicode associates with a particular character symbol; you can think of it as the Unicode equivalent of the ASCII code for a character.2020, Randall Hyde, Write Great Code, 2nd edition, volume 1, No Starch Press, →ISBN, page 102:

Related terms: codespace, combining character, combining mark, grapheme, grapheme cluster