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"one byte is eight bits" is extraordinarily different from "one character is eight bits". In fact, by conflating them you are implicitly making the assumption
by quietbritishjim 8y ago
"one byte is eight bits" is extraordinarily different from "one character is eight bits".
In fact, by conflating them you are implicitly making the assumption that one character is one byte, which is exactly what your comment is really warning against.
- Cogito 8y agoI agree with you, but was trying to illustrate an example from the class of 'one byte is eight bits' style assumptions. Hopefully I made it clear that 'one character -> one byte -> eight bits' is an assumption that can cause a lot of pain. The simplest usage of non-standard character bytes I can think of from the top of my head is in SMS (as described in that interesting article that was submitted these last few weeks sometime) where the standard used 7-bit character bytes in order to get longer messages, and then struggled to deal with international character encodings. Maybe it's drawing a long bow, but I think this specific example is of the same class of assumptions that jacquesm was describing when they said "a byte is 8 bits", and clearly this is a problem that will not "only cause trouble in rare cases".