A UTF-8 encoded [prim@char].

This alternate representation of a char allows for certain benefits:

• Deref to &str
• Hash/Eq/Ord like &str
• Smaller than &'static str for single codepoint cases (full const support included)
• Some char methods are implementable without the performance loss of &str -> char -> &str (for instance in a str::chars() loop)

To get started, create a Utf8Char.

utf8char

A char encoded as UTF-8, this has multiple advantages over the char primitive and a one codepoint &str.

Encoding and decoding char<->utf8 is expensive, yet common in cases where the advantages of the char data representation may not matter (see: str::chars() -> transform -> collect::<String>()).