Comparing text strings with Unicode encoding includes receiving two text strings S1 and S2. The process computes, for the first text string S1, a first weight according to a weight function ƒ that computes an ASCII prefix ƒA(S1), computes a Unicode weight suffix ƒU(S1), and concatenates the weights to form the first weight ƒ(S1)=ƒA(S1)+ƒU(S1). Computing the ASCII prefix for the first string applies bitwise operations to n-byte contiguous blocks of the first string to determine whether each block contains only ASCII characters, and replaces accented Unicode characters with equivalent unaccented ASCII characters when comparison is designated as accent-insensitive. When there is a first block containing a non-replaceable non-ASCII character, the Unicode weight suffix is computed by performing a character-by-character Unicode weight lookup beginning with the first block. The same process is applied to the second string. The text string are compared by comparing their computed weights.