Because char is loaded here. It is the minimum addressable bit size. So they need to do it because it is faster and cheaper to address larger chunks. The iss

Because char is loaded here. It is the minimum addressable bit size. So they need to do it because it is faster and cheaper to address larger chunks. The issue in the article is that calls to fputc/fwrite to a binary file will truncate to 8bits still on some of those platforms. A byte type that is always 8bits would be a better approach, i think. But c++ bungled this too, it is the size of a char still. I dont think it should exist on systems that cannot address 8bits