UTF-8 Validation

Another leetCode challenge on UTF-8 Validation.

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). - You can use the link above to see more details.

SOLUTION
This was quite a challenge! let's look at the step to solve it.

• Loop through the array.

• Find the binary representation for each integer using the format method that takes in two arguments

• Loop through the first octet sequence to determine if it is a valid UTF-8 encoding, by checking if the character is 1 - 4 bytes Long.

• Check the next two bit of the sequence if they follow the rules, to check for validity

Rules
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:

Number of Bytes   |        UTF-8 Octet Sequence
                       |              (binary)
   --------------------+-----------------------------------------
            1          |   0xxxxxxx
            2          |   110xxxxx 10xxxxxx
            3          |   1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
            4          |   11110xxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx

x denotes a bit in the binary form of a byte that may be either 0 or 1.