There are all kinds of interesting things in the Unicode standard. For example, the block of characters from U+A000 to U+A48F is for representing syllables in the “Yi script”. Apparently it is a Chinese language writing system developed during the Tang Dynasty.

A string drawn from this block has an unusual property; the string consists of just two characters, both the same: a repetition of character U+A0A2:

string s = “ꂢꂢ”;

Or, if your browser can’t hack the Yi script, that’s the equivalent of the C# program fragment:

string s = “\uA0A2\uA0A2”;

What curious property does this string have?

I’ll leave some hints below — scroll down — and post the answer next time.

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Hint #1: The curious property is platform-dependent; you’ll want to be using a 32 bit version of CLR v4.

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Hint #2: The curious property is also a property of a much more commonly-used string.

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Hint #3: This string has the same hash code as the empty string, but that’s not the only thing that is curious about it that it has in common with the empty string.