In Java, When a Character Is Stored In Memory, It Is Actually Stored As A(N):

A character in Java is stored in memory as a 16-bit Unicode character. This means that each character is stored using two bytes (16 bits) of memory. This is unlike the C language, where a character is stored as an 8-bit byte, allowing for 256 characters to be represented. In Java, the two bytes of memory used by each character allows for up to 65,536 characters to be represented.

Compact Strings were introduced in Java 9 to reduce the amount of memory used by Strings. A char array containing the characters used in the String is still used, but instead of using two bytes of memory for each character, the characters are stored using a single byte only. This allows more characters to be represented in the same amount of memory, resulting in a more efficient use of memory for String objects.

The reason why Java stores characters as 16-bit Unicode characters is mainly because of compatibility and historical reasons. If Java had adopted 32-bit wide characters, it would mean that all methods that define characters must accept 32 bits instead of 16, requiring a significant amount of changes to standard libraries and API’s.

A character in Java is stored in memory as a 16-bit Unicode character, allowing for up to 65,536 characters to be represented. This is in contrast to the C language, which stores characters as 8-bit bytes, allowing for only 256 characters to be represented. Compact Strings were introduced in Java 9 in order to reduce the memory usage of String objects, while still preserving compatibility with existing libraries and API’s.