12. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising program code for causing a processor to execute a method, program code comprising: program code for receiving a first text string comprising characters represented in the first text string according to a first representation format; program code for generating a second text string comprising characters represented in the first text string according to a second representation format comprising an equality part and a differentiator part, wherein the equality part indicates a membership within a class of characters and a sort priority of the class of characters, and the differentiator part represents a particular character of the class of characters indicated by the equality part, and wherein a combination of the equality part and the differentiator part provides a complete representation of the string, said second representation format comprising a variable number of bits per character; program code for storing the second text string in a database; program code for receiving a request for the first text string; program code for retrieving the second text string from the database in response to the request; program code for displaying the second text string by generating a displayable representation of the second text string from the combination of the equality part and the differentiator part; program code for generating the first text string from the second text string based at least in part on the equality parts and the differentiator parts of the characters in the second text string; and program code for outputting the first text string.
19. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 12 , wherein said second text string comprises a string format having an equality string part and a second string part, the equality string part comprising the equality parts of each of the characters of the string, and the second string part comprising the second parts of each of the characters of the string, wherein the equality string part comprises a contiguous block of memory storing the equality parts of each of the characters of the string, and wherein the differentiator string part comprises a contiguous block of memory storing the differentiator parts of each of the characters of the string.