什么是UTF字符?

在最近写j2me应用的时候常常遇到writeUTF，什么是UTF呢？

 Q: What is a UTF?

A: A Unicode transformation format (UTF) is an algorithmic mapping from every Unicode code point (except surrogate code points) to a unique byte sequence. The ISO/IEC 10646 standard uses the term “UCS transformation format” for UTF; the two terms are merely synonyms for the same concept.

Each UTF is reversible（可逆的）, thus every UTF supports lossless round tripping: mapping from any Unicode coded character sequence S to a sequence of bytes and back will produce S again. To ensure round tripping, a UTF mapping must also map all code points that are not valid Unicode characters to unique byte sequences. These invalid code points are the 66 noncharacters (including FFFE and FFFF), as well as unpaired surrogates.