ISO-2022-JP
ISO-2022-JP is a character encoding standard used primarily for representing Japanese text in email and other text-based protocols. It is based on the ISO 2022 framework, which allows switching between different character sets using escape sequences, and it specifically encodes Japanese characters using a combination of ASCII, JIS X 0201 (a single-byte encoding for half-width kana and ASCII), and JIS X 0208 (a double-byte encoding for full-width kanji, kana, and other Japanese symbols). This encoding was widely adopted in Japan during the early days of the internet to ensure compatibility across different systems and email clients.
Developers should learn about ISO-2022-JP when working with legacy systems, email processing, or text data from Japan that dates back to the 1990s or early 2000s, as it was a common encoding for Japanese emails and web content during that period. Understanding this encoding is crucial for handling character conversion, ensuring data integrity in archival or migration projects, and debugging encoding issues in applications that process international text, especially when dealing with older Japanese software or protocols like SMTP for email.