GBK Encoding and UTF-8 coding

Reprinted from: http://blog.sina.com.cn/zq0354

GBK text encoding is a double-byte representation, that is, both Chinese and English characters are represented by double-byte, but in order to distinguish English, the highest bit is set to 1.
UTF-8 encoding is a multi-byte encoding used to solve international characters, which uses 8 bits (or one byte) in English and is encoded in Chinese using 24 bits (three bytes). For forums with more English characters, you can save space with UTF-8.

Perhaps you can not understand the above, simply say GBK is the Chinese character set, installed in Chinese GBK encoded computer normal display Chinese, and if the foreign non-Chinese operating system on the computer will be displayed garbled, so GBK mainly for domestic website use.
and UTF8 is international standard, if in foreign non-Chinese operating system, also can display Chinese correctly.

There is a database size problem, because GBK with double-byte to represent, and UTF8 Chinese to use three bytes to represent, so UTF8 database will be larger than GBK.

You know the above knowledge should be able to know what your website is suitable for the code.
For example, the content of a lot of sites, mainly for domestic visits that can use GBK encoding.
While less content sites, corporate sites, etc., it is recommended to use UTF8 encoding,
and UTF8 and GBK can convert each other.

GBK Encoding and UTF-8 coding