how to compare file chars with bytes?

[Tiemo Hollmann TB]

Hello,

sorry for this perhaps stupid question. I want to show a progress bar while
reading a file in chunks of chars in a repeat loop.

Filtering first the total number of bytes out of the detailed files info I
thought I could easily set the read chars in relation of the total bytes,
thinking that the number of chars is roughly equivalent to the number of
bytes, beside of some overhead here and there, but the numbers are
completely different.

Obviously I am missing some basics here, but there should be a simple
solution for this standard issue?

Thanks for correcting me

Tiemo