Random832 <random...@fastmail.com>:
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016, at 16:51, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Saturday, August 20, 2016 at 6:03:53 AM UTC+12, Terry Reedy wrote:
>> > An 'octet' is a byte of 8 bits.
>> Is there any other size of byte?
> Not very often anymore.
The main difference between an octet and a byte is that a "byte" is used
when talking about computers while an "octet" is a term used in
telecommunications protocols.
(If I'm not mistaken, "octet" is also French for "byte".)
Somewhat analogously, a programmer can rely on integers being
2's-complement. IOW, even in Python,
-X == ~X + 1
for any integer.
2'scomplement arithmetics is quite often taken advantage of in C
programming. Unfortunately, with the castration of signed integers with
the most recent C standards, 2's-complement has been dangerously broken.
Marko
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