From: XXguille AT XXiies DOT XXes (Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Portability and size_t type related question Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 20:47:38 GMT Organization: Telefonica Transmision de Datos Lines: 20 Message-ID: <374322ea.2462585@noticias.iies.es> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: iies252.iies.es Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com El día Wed, 19 May 1999 16:31:58 +0200, dlanor AT dds DOT nl (Ronald Landheer) escribió: >>> > > Most people think that byte is a synonym for 8 bits. >>> > I'm aware of that. But that doesn't make it correct, at least not from >>> > a 'language-lawyer' point of view. Actually, the equivalence of 8 bits >>> > being a byte is a rather recent invention, compared to the use of the >>> > 'byte' in computing. There have been 7-bit bytes, 9-bit ones. 8 bits >>I think 8 bits is minimum. >Nope.. six bits is (for as far as I encountered). Wrong again. There are still a bunch of 4-bit microprocessors around there, and again this is just a *practical* limit. You can build 1-bit byte machines if you want. Not very useful, though. Regards: GUILLE ---- Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia XXguille AT XXiies DOT XXes (ya sabes :-)