On Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:57:34, Johnny Eriksson said: > valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: > > > And the -10s and -20s were the major reason RFCs refer to octets > > rather than bytes, as they had a rather slippery notion of "byte" > > (anywhere from 6 to 9 bits, often multiple sizes used *in the > > same program*). > > Not quite correct. Anywhere from 1 to 36 bits, and not spanning > a 36-bit word boundary. Essentialy what is now known as a bit field.
Right - but in actual programming practice, code tended to distinguish between a "byte" and "N bit wide field of flags or whatever". And bytes as character storage ran from 6 to 9 bits depending on the charset in use.
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