9. The method of claim 1 , wherein computing the ASCII prefix is performed iteratively, starting with an initial n-byte block of the first text string, sequentially processing n-byte blocks until reaching the end of the first text string or reaching an n-byte block that contains a non-replaceable non-ASCII character.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein computing the ASCII prefix is performed iteratively, starting with an initial n-byte block of the first text string, sequentially processing n-byte blocks until reaching the end of the first text string or reaching an n-byte block that contains a non-replaceable non-ASCII character. 11. The method of claim 9 , wherein, when comparison is designated as accent-insensitive, each non-ASCII character is designated as a non-replaceable non-ASCII character when lookup of the respective non-ASCII character in an ASCII-equivalent table has no matching entry.