Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!mtune!codas!cpsc6a!rtech!wrs!dg From: dg@wrs.UUCP (David Goodenough) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Size of SysV "block" (really: byte != 8 bits) Message-ID: <274@wrs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 24-Jul-87 17:11:15 EDT Article-I.D.: wrs.274 Posted: Fri Jul 24 17:11:15 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jul-87 01:24:19 EDT References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <857@bsu-cs.UUCP> <6144@brl-smoke.ARPA> Reply-To: dg@wrs.UUCP (David Goodenough) Organization: Wind River Systems, Emeryville, CA Lines: 27 In article <6144@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)) writes: >In article <857@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >>A byte is therefore exactly 8 bits. No more and no less. Opinions to >>the contrary belong in the 1960s. Let them lie there and die there. > >And people who believe that 8 bits is sufficiently to encode a >character are either naive or stupid. Well I've never yet had a problem communicating with any machine that uses ASCII (American *STANDARD* Code for Information Interchange), and it's my (possibly deluded :-) belief that there are a lot of machines out there that do like I do and use 8 bit bytes for holding characters. Let's see - there are Z80's (and maybe a couple of dozen other 8 bit micros), 8086 family, ns32000 family, pdp-11, vax, 68000 family, Z8000, amd2900 family, etc. etc. etc. Then we start looking at uarts and other communication devices- we have the Z80 DART/SIO, 8080 devices, the 6502 ACIA, plus the countless others that are not attached to any architecture. I don't know about the rest of the world, but it looks to me as if 8 bit chars are here to stay. (Just out of idle curiosity what size did you have in mind for a character, and WHY?) -- dg@wrs.UUCP - David Goodenough +---+ | +-+-+ +-+-+ | +---+