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What is an ACE string?

An ACE string is what you see once the IDN you entered in your browser’s address bar has been converted into a form that is understood by the Domain Name System.

ACE strings begin with four characters, xn--, to indicate that the domain name is an IDN. Other characters, at the end of the string, indicate which characters in the IDN you entered were non-ASCII characters and their positions.

The characters between the prefix and the end characters are those from the original IDN that did not need to be converted because they already belong to the basic ASCII character set.