A method, executed by one or more processors, includes receiving a first bit sequence corresponding to source data having a source encoding bit-length (BLS), generating one or more additional bit sequences by shifting the first bit sequence by shift lengths that are equal to a multiple of the source encoding bit-length, partitioning the first bit sequence and the one or more additional bit sequences according to a target encoding bit-length (BLT) to provide a plurality of target encoding search patterns, and searching a target character string encoded with the target encoding using the plurality of target encoding search patterns. A computer system and computer program product corresponding to the above method are also disclosed herein.