On 10/25/2010 2:33 AM, Steve Holden wrote:
On 10/25/2010 1:42 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
In message<mailman.31.1287517442.2218.python-l...@python.org>, Petite
Abeille wrote:
Characters vs. Bytes
And why do certain people insist on referring to bytes as “octets”?
Because back in the old days bytes were of varying sizes on different
architectures - indeed the DECSystem-10 and -20 had instructions that
could be parameterized as to byte size. So octet was an unambiguous term
for the (now standard) 8-bit byte.
As I remember, there were machines (CDC? Burroughs?) with 6-bit
char/bytes: 26 upper-case letters, 10 digits, 24 symbols and control chars.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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