Subject: Re: [stella] What's magic about a byte? From: "Darrell Spice, Jr." <dspice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 20:15:53 -0400 |
A byte is enough bits to represent 1 character. On older systems a byte was only 6 bits because they only used uppercase, numbers and a few other characters which fit within the 64 values that can be represented by 6 bits. 6 bit bytes are also why octal was popular, and still supported in compilers such as GCC. An 8 bit byte can be represented by 2 hex(base 16) characters from 0x00 to 0xff, while a 6 bit byte can be represented by 2 octal(base 8) characters from 000 to 077(octal numbers are shown with a leading 0). Google on 6 bit byte or 7 bit byte and you'll turn up lots of other info. On Apr 11, 2005, at 6:34 PM, Ruffin Bailey wrote: > Okay, we all know that every bit is sacred, but, out of curiosity, why > are there 8 bits in a byte as opposed to 10 or 3? > > Just curious. Thanks. > > Ruffin Bailey > > > Archives (includes files) at > http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ > Unsub & more at http://stella.biglist.com > > Darrell Spice, Jr. www.spiceware.org Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ Unsub & more at http://stella.biglist.com
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