{"id":13579,"date":"2024-09-30T22:41:21","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T20:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salvis.com\/blog\/?p=13579"},"modified":"2024-10-02T20:23:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T18:23:52","slug":"how-many-bytes-are-in-an-emoji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salvis.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/30\/how-many-bytes-are-in-an-emoji\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Bytes Are in an Emoji?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What Is a Byte?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A byte is made up of 8 bits. And in the old days, it represented a character. If you use a single-byte character set such as WE8MSWIN1252, WE8ISO8859P15 or similar, it still is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Is a Character?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We can find definitions for example on Wikipedia<\/a> and in the documentation for the Oracle Database<\/a>. The current Unicode standard<\/a> (version 16) defines 154,998 characters. The CodeChart.pdf<\/a> is part of the standard and describes all those characters on 3113 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Does It Matter?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A character is a part of a string and we store strings in the database. The SQL standard defines a <character string type><\/a><\/code> with an optional <character maximum length><\/code> in octets (bytes) or characters. In other words, the size of a character string is defined by the number of characters it contains. In the Oracle Database, we also have a hard limit of 4000 or 32767 bytes for data types like char<\/code>, varchar<\/code> or varchar2<\/code> depending on the max_string_size<\/code> parameter. So we should know exactly what the size of a string data type means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Querying UTF-8 Characters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The following query provides details about a bunch of UTF-8 characters. I ran the query in my Oracle Database 23.5 with an AL32UTF8 character set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/circle><\/circle><\/circle><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span>
with<\/span><\/span>\n   <\/span>data<\/span> (<\/span>name<\/span>, <\/span>value<\/span>) <\/span>as<\/span> (<\/span>values<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Latin capital letter A'<\/span>,                       <\/span>'A'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Dollar sign'<\/span>,                                  <\/span>'$'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Copyright sign'<\/span>,                               <\/span>'\u00a9'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Pound sign'<\/span>,                                   <\/span>'\u00a3'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Euro sign'<\/span>,                                    <\/span>'\u20ac'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Double exlamation mark'<\/span>,                       <\/span>'\u203c'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Trademark sign'<\/span>,                               <\/span>'\u2122'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Grinning face'<\/span>,                                <\/span>'\ud83d\ude00'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Double exclamation mark (emoji)'<\/span>,              <\/span>'\u203c\ufe0f'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Trademark sign (emoji)'<\/span>,                       <\/span>'\u2122\ufe0f'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Information'<\/span>,                                  <\/span>'\u2139\ufe0f'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'No entry'<\/span>,                                     <\/span>'\u26d4'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Woman'<\/span>,                                        <\/span>'\ud83d\udc69'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Woman with white hair, medium-dark skin tone'<\/span>, <\/span>'\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83e\uddb3'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Man'<\/span>,                                          <\/span>'\ud83d\udc68'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Girl'<\/span>,                                         <\/span>'\ud83d\udc67'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Boy'<\/span>,                                          <\/span>'\ud83d\udc66'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Family'<\/span>,                                       <\/span>'\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66'<\/span>),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>'Kiss: woman, man, medium-light skin tone'<\/span>,     <\/span>'\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc'<\/span>)<\/span><\/span>\n   )<\/span><\/span>\nselect<\/span> <\/span>name<\/span>,<\/span><\/span>\n       <\/span>value<\/span>,<\/span><\/span>\n       <\/span>length<\/span>(<\/span>value<\/span>)  <\/span>as<\/span> len_in_chars,<\/span><\/span>\n       lengthb(<\/span>value<\/span>) <\/span>as<\/span> len_in_bytes,<\/span><\/span>\n       substr(<\/span>dump<\/span>(<\/span>value<\/span>, <\/span>16<\/span>), instr(<\/span>dump<\/span>(<\/span>value<\/span>, <\/span>16<\/span>), <\/span>':'<\/span>) + <\/span>2<\/span>) <\/span>as<\/span> bytes_as_hex_list<\/span><\/span>\n  <\/span>from<\/span> <\/span>data<\/span>;<\/span><\/span><\/code><\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span>
NAME                                         VALUE LEN_IN_CHARS LEN_IN_BYTES BYTES_AS_HEX_LIST                                                         <\/span><\/span>\n-------------------------------------------- ----- ------------ ------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<\/span><\/span>\nLatin capital letter A                       A                1            1 41                                                                        <\/span><\/span>\nDollar sign                                  $                1            1 24                                                                        <\/span><\/span>\nCopyright sign                               \u00a9                1            2 c2,a9                                                                     <\/span><\/span>\nPound sign                                   \u00a3                1            2 c2,a3                                                                     <\/span><\/span>\nEuro sign                                    \u20ac                1            3 e2,82,ac                                                                  <\/span><\/span>\nDouble exlamation mark                       \u203c                1            3 e2,80,bc                                                                  <\/span><\/span>\nTrademark sign                               \u2122                1            3 e2,84,a2                                                                  <\/span><\/span>\nGrinning face                                \ud83d\ude00               1            4 f0,9f,98,80                                                               <\/span><\/span>\nDouble exclamation mark (emoji)              \u203c\ufe0f               2            6 e2,80,bc,ef,b8,8f                                                         <\/span><\/span>\nTrademark sign (emoji)                       \u2122\ufe0f               2            6 e2,84,a2,ef,b8,8f                                                         <\/span><\/span>\nInformation                                  \u2139\ufe0f               2            6 e2,84,b9,ef,b8,8f                                                         <\/span><\/span>\nNo entry                                     \u26d4               1            3 e2,9b,94                                                                  <\/span><\/span>\nWoman                                        \ud83d\udc69               1            4 f0,9f,91,a9                                                               <\/span><\/span>\nWoman with white hair, medium-dark skin tone \ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83e\uddb3               4           15 f0,9f,91,a9,f0,9f,8f,be,e2,80,8d,f0,9f,a6,b3<\/span><\/span>\nMan                                          \ud83d\udc68               1            4 f0,9f,91,a8                                                               <\/span><\/span>\nGirl                                         \ud83d\udc67               1            4 f0,9f,91,a7                                                               <\/span><\/span>\nBoy                                          \ud83d\udc66               1            4 f0,9f,91,a6                                                               <\/span><\/span>\nFamily                                       \ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66               7           25 f0,9f,91,a8,e2,80,8d,f0,9f,91,a9,e2,80,8d,f0,9f,91,a7,e2,80,8d,f0,9f,91,a6<\/span><\/span>\nKiss: woman, man, medium-light skin tone     \ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc              10           35 f0,9f,91,a9,f0,9f,8f,bc,e2,80,8d,e2,9d,a4,ef,b8,8f,e2,80,8d,f0,9f,92,8b,e2,80,8d,f0,9f,91,a8,f0,9f,8f,bc<\/span><\/span>\n<\/span><\/span>\n19 rows selected. <\/span><\/span><\/code><\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Monospaced Font<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
I’m using a monospaced font for code in this blog. However, some graphemes are wider than others. The fixed-width font no longer works as expected. This is why the result is not nicely formatted. Using spaces to format a result grid does not work anymore. Most emojis use more than two spaces but less than three spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Same Looking Graphemes<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
The \u203c<\/code> (Double exclamation mark) can be represented with 3 bytes or 6 bytes. The additional three bytes are efb88f<\/code>. It’s a variation selector U+FE0F<\/code>. It marks a “normal” character as emoji. As a result, we expect the emoji to look different. However, the representation depends on the font and in this case on the browser. Just because two graphemes look the same does not mean they are identical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Codepoint to Bytes<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
A UTF-8 character is defined as a code point. Wikipedia<\/a> describes quite well how a code point is converted into a byte sequence. I’ve created a PL\/SQL package to convert a code point to bytes and vice versa. It’s available as Gist on GitHub.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here’s an example of how to use it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/circle><\/circle><\/circle><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span>
select<\/span> utf8.codepoint_to_bytes(<\/span>'U+FE0F'<\/span>) <\/span>as<\/span> to_bytes,<\/span><\/span>\n       utf8.bytes_to_codepoint(<\/span>'EFB88F'<\/span>) <\/span>as<\/span> to_codepoint;<\/span><\/span><\/code><\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span>
TO_BYTES TO_CODEPOINT<\/span><\/span>\n-------- ------------<\/span><\/span>\nEFB88F   U+FE0F      <\/span><\/span><\/code><\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Skin tones and Joined Emojies<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
For various emojis, you can define a skin tone. This increases the size of a grapheme. The \ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83e\uddb3 (Woman with white hair, medium-dark skin tone) consists of the following 4 characters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • \ud83d\udc69 (Woman): U+1F469<\/code>, 4 bytes<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • \ud83c\udffe (Medium-Dark Skin Tone Modifier): U+1F3FE<\/code>, 4 bytes<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Zero Width Joiner: U+200D<\/code>, 3 bytes<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • \ud83e\uddb3 (White Hair): U+1F9B3<\/code>, 4 bytes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    Emoji Breakdown via SQL<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
    The following query shows the characters of the largest three emojis in my example set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    <\/circle><\/circle><\/circle><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span>
    with<\/span><\/span>\n   <\/span>data<\/span> (seq, emoji, bytes) <\/span>as<\/span> (<\/span>values<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>1<\/span>, <\/span>'\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83e\uddb3'<\/span>, <\/span>json<\/span>[4, 4, 3, 4]),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>2<\/span>, <\/span>'\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66'<\/span>, <\/span>json<\/span>[4, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4]),<\/span><\/span>\n      (<\/span>3<\/span>, <\/span>'\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc'<\/span>, <\/span>json<\/span>[4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4, 4])<\/span><\/span>\n   )<\/span><\/span>\nselect<\/span> d.emoji,<\/span><\/span>\n       j.seq <\/span>as<\/span> part,<\/span><\/span>\n       substr(d.emoji, j.seq, <\/span>1<\/span>) <\/span>as<\/span> e_char,<\/span><\/span>\n       <\/span>sum<\/span>(j.bytes) <\/span>over<\/span> (<\/span>partition<\/span> <\/span>by<\/span> d.seq <\/span>order by<\/span> j.seq) <\/span>as<\/span> e_char_len,<\/span><\/span>\n       substr(<\/span>dump<\/span>(substr(d.emoji, j.seq, <\/span>1<\/span>), <\/span>16<\/span>), <\/span>14<\/span>) <\/span>as<\/span> e_char_bytes<\/span><\/span>\n  <\/span>from<\/span> <\/span>data<\/span> d,<\/span><\/span>\n       json_table(<\/span><\/span>\n          d.bytes, <\/span>'$[*]'<\/span><\/span>\n          columns (<\/span><\/span>\n             seq <\/span>for<\/span> ordinality,<\/span><\/span>\n             bytes <\/span>number<\/span> <\/span>path<\/span> <\/span>'$'<\/span><\/span>\n          )<\/span><\/span>\n       ) j<\/span><\/span>\n <\/span>order by<\/span> d.seq, j.seq;<\/span><\/span><\/code><\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
    <\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span>
    EMOJI       PART E_CHAR E_CHAR_LEN E_CHAR_BYTES<\/span><\/span>\n----- ---------- ------ ---------- ------------<\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83e\uddb3             1 \ud83d\udc69              4 f0,9f,91,a9 <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83e\uddb3             2 \ud83c\udffe               8 f0,9f,8f,be <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83e\uddb3             3 \u200d               11 e2,80,8d    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83e\uddb3             4 \ud83e\uddb3             15 f0,9f,a6,b3 <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66             1 \ud83d\udc68              4 f0,9f,91,a8 <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66             2 \u200d                7 e2,80,8d    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66             3 \ud83d\udc69             11 f0,9f,91,a9 <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66             4 \u200d               14 e2,80,8d    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66             5 \ud83d\udc67             18 f0,9f,91,a7 <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66             6 \u200d               21 e2,80,8d    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83d\udc67\u200d\ud83d\udc66             7 \ud83d\udc66             25 f0,9f,91,a6 <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             1 \ud83d\udc69              4 f0,9f,91,a9 <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             2 \ud83c\udffc               8 f0,9f,8f,bc <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             3 \u200d               11 e2,80,8d    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             4 \u2764              14 e2,9d,a4    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             5 \ufe0f               17 ef,b8,8f    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             6 \u200d               20 e2,80,8d    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             7 \ud83d\udc8b             24 f0,9f,92,8b <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             8 \u200d               27 e2,80,8d    <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc             9 \ud83d\udc68             31 f0,9f,91,a8 <\/span><\/span>\n\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc            10 \ud83c\udffc              35 f0,9f,8f,bc <\/span><\/span>\n<\/span><\/span>\n21 rows selected. <\/span><\/span><\/code><\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
    Depending on your browser the result may or may not show the skin tone modifier emoji.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    Theoretically, a grapheme can be built by an unlimited number of characters. As far as I know, 10 characters and 35 bytes for the kiss emoji \ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffc\u200d\u2764\ufe0f\u200d\ud83d\udc8b\u200d\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffc  with two persons and a skin tone modifier are currently the maximum. This makes sizing a column with emojis a bit challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Going for the maximum byte size is still a bad idea IMO. We would lose important information about our data. Even if the number of characters is not a perfect fit for a string containing emojis, it still gives the consumers an idea of how large a string can be. This helps when writing reports and similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    I reckon columns with emojis are still the exception in an Oracle Database. However, it is good to know that an emoji can take up to 35 times more bytes than a regular Latin character.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    What Is a Byte? A byte is made up of 8 bits. And in the old days, it represented a character. If you use a single-byte character set such as WE8MSWIN1252, WE8ISO8859P15 or similar, it still is. What Is a Character? We can find definitions for example on Wikipedia and in the [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[140,13,85],"class_list":["post-13579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oracle","tag-oracle-26ai","tag-plsql","tag-sql"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Many Bytes Are in an Emoji? - Philipp Salvisberg's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We store strings in the database, so we should know exactly what the size of a string datatype means. Especially when using emojis.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.salvis.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/30\/how-many-bytes-are-in-an-emoji\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Many Bytes Are in an Emoji? - Philipp Salvisberg's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We store strings in the database, so we should know exactly what the size of a string datatype means. 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Value vs. Character<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
The len_in_chars<\/code> column should make it clear that the thing represented in the value<\/code> column is not a character. It’s a grapheme<\/a> – the smallest functional unit of a writing system. A grapheme can be built by more than one character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n