LeetCode 393, Medium. Topics: Array, Bit Manipulation. View on LeetCode.
Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 20 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:
Problem
Given an integer array data representing the data, return whether it is a valid UTF-8 encoding (i.e. it translates to a sequence of valid UTF-8 encoded characters).
A character in UTF8 can be from 1 to 4 bytes long, subjected to the following rules:
- For a 1-byte character, the first bit is a
0, followed by its Unicode code.
- For an n-bytes character, the first
n bits are all one’s, the n + 1 bit is 0, followed by n - 1 bytes with the most significant 2 bits being 10.
This is how the UTF-8 encoding would work:
x denotes a bit in the binary form of a byte that may be either 0 or 1.
Note: 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.
Examples
Constraints
- 1 <= data.length <= 2 * 10^4
- 0 <= data[i] <= 255
Solution
Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:
Complexity
Last modified on September 7, 2026