UTF-8 validation

Time: O(N); Space: O(N); medium

A character in UTF8 can be from 1 to 4 bytes long, subjected to the following rules: * For 1-byte character, the first bit is a 0, followed by its unicode code. * For n-bytes character, the first n-bits are all one’s, the n+1 bit is 0, followed by n-1 bytes with most significant 2 bits being 10.

This is how the UTF-8 encoding would work:

+------------------------+-------------------------------------+

| Char. number range     |  UTF-8 octet sequence               |

|    (hexadecimal)       |         (binary)                    |

+========================+=====================================+

| 0000 0000-0000 007F    | 0xxxxxxx                            |

+------------------------+-------------------------------------+

| 0000 0080-0000 07FF    | 110xxxxx 10xxxxxx                   |

+------------------------+-------------------------------------+

| 0000 0800-0000 FFFF    | 1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx          |

+------------------------+-------------------------------------+

| 0001 0000-0010 FFFF    | 11110xxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx |

+------------------------+-------------------------------------+

Given an array of integers representing the data, return whether it is a valid utf-8 encoding.

Notes:

  • The input is an array of integers.

  • Only the least significant 8 bits of each integer is used to store the data.

  • This means each integer represents only 1 byte of data.

Example 1:

Input: data = [197, 130, 1]

Output: True

Eplanation:

  • data = [197, 130, 1] represents the octet sequence: 11000101 10000010 00000001

  • It is a valid utf-8 encoding for a 2-bytes character followed by a 1-byte character.

Example 2:

Input: data = [235, 140, 4]

Output: False

Eplanation:

  • data = [235, 140, 4] represented the octet sequence: 11101011 10001100 00000100

  • The first 3 bits are all one’s and the 4th bit is 0 means it is a 3-bytes character.

  • The next byte is a continuation byte which starts with 10 and that’s correct.

  • But the second continuation byte does not start with 10, so it is invalid.

[1]:
class Solution1(object):
    """
    Time: O(N)
    Space: O(1)
    """
    def validUtf8(self, data) -> bool:
        """
        :type data: List[int]
        :rtype: bool
        """
        count = 0
        for c in data:
            if count == 0:
                if (c >> 5) == 0b110:
                    count = 1
                elif (c >> 4) == 0b1110:
                    count = 2
                elif (c >> 3) == 0b11110:
                    count = 3
                elif (c >> 7):
                    return False
            else:
                if (c >> 6) != 0b10:
                    return False
                count -= 1
        return count == 0
[2]:
s = Solution1()
data = [197, 130, 1]
assert s.validUtf8(data) == True
data = [235, 140, 4]
assert s.validUtf8(data) == False