I'm not sure what you're describing, but it's not Unicode (type code and field of data are not in Unicode jargon, so I don't know if you're just loose with terminology or describing some other system).
Combining marks in Unicode are not some unrelated surprise. They're required to correctly interpret the code point they follow. Unicode requires that you to continue to consume them until they end or the input ends. In other words, Unicode is always a variable-length encoding. text[0] alone is never sufficient.
Combining marks in Unicode are not some unrelated surprise. They're required to correctly interpret the code point they follow. Unicode requires that you to continue to consume them until they end or the input ends. In other words, Unicode is always a variable-length encoding. text[0] alone is never sufficient.