@@ -162,6 +162,22 @@ public static int compareUtf8Strings(String left, String right) {
162162 // used to represent code points greater than 0xFFFF which have 4-byte UTF-8 representations
163163 // and are lexicographically greater than the 1, 2, or 3-byte representations of code points
164164 // less than or equal to 0xFFFF.
165+ //
166+ // An example of why Case 2 is required is comparing the following two Unicode code points:
167+ //
168+ // |-----------------------|------------|---------------------|-----------------|
169+ // | Name | Code Point | UTF-8 Encoding | UTF-16 Encoding |
170+ // |-----------------------|------------|---------------------|-----------------|
171+ // | Replacement Character | U+FFFD | 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD | 0xFFFD |
172+ // | Grinning Face | U+1F600 | 0xF0 0x9F 0x98 0x80 | 0xD83D 0xDE00 |
173+ // |-----------------------|------------|---------------------|-----------------|
174+ //
175+ // A lexicographical comparison of the UTF-8 encodings of these code points would order
176+ // "Replacement Character" _before_ "Grinning Face" because 0xEF is less than 0xF0. However, a
177+ // direct comparison of the UTF-16 code units, as would be done in case 1, would erroneously
178+ // produce the _opposite_ ordering, because 0xFFFD is _greater than_ 0xD83D. As it turns out,
179+ // this relative ordering holds for all comparisons of UTF-16 code points requiring a surrogate
180+ // pair with those that do not.
165181 final int length = Math .min (left .length (), right .length ());
166182 for (int i = 0 ; i < length ; i ++) {
167183 final char leftChar = left .charAt (i );
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