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  4. What is a 'byte'?

What is a 'byte'?

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  • N Nish Nishant

    sclh wrote: Does that means I am actually shrinking the size of the data? Nope. When you have an 8-bit binary number - that's a byte. Exmaples of bytes are 10010010, 10001000, 11111111, 0 (00000000), 10000001 etc. The decimal equivalent of the largest unsigned byte is 255. So if you have a byte variable, it can represent any of 256 values (0 included).

    U Offline
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    User 1990498
    wrote on last edited by
    #7

    Ok, thank you for the info. Perhaps I will go and read up and find out my problem then I will consult help again.Thanks.

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    • U User 1990498

      Hi, can someone tell me what is a byte? how many bits does 1 byte equals to?

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      V Offline
      V 0
      wrote on last edited by
      #8

      the word byte comes from By Eight. Meaning they took eight bits together :-) No hurries, no worries.

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      • V V 0

        the word byte comes from By Eight. Meaning they took eight bits together :-) No hurries, no worries.

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        M Offline
        markkuk
        wrote on last edited by
        #9

        No, it comes from the word "bite", but with changed spelling. Originally bytes could be 1-6 bits in length. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte[^] http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/byte.html[^]

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        • M markkuk

          No, it comes from the word "bite", but with changed spelling. Originally bytes could be 1-6 bits in length. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte[^] http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/byte.html[^]

          V Offline
          V Offline
          V 0
          wrote on last edited by
          #10

          ok I stand corrected. No hurries, no worries.

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          • C Cedric Moonen

            A byte is equal to 8 bits. It has the same size as a character.

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            David Crow
            wrote on last edited by
            #11

            cedric moonen wrote: A byte is equal to 8 bits. Only for UTF-8. You could also have UTF-16 which would be a 16-bit byte (e.g., Unicode).


            "Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown

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            • V V 0

              ok I stand corrected. No hurries, no worries.

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              N Offline
              NormDroid
              wrote on last edited by
              #12

              you almost had me convinced ;P Blogless

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              • D David Crow

                cedric moonen wrote: A byte is equal to 8 bits. Only for UTF-8. You could also have UTF-16 which would be a 16-bit byte (e.g., Unicode).


                "Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown

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                R Offline
                Ravi Bhavnani
                wrote on last edited by
                #13

                AFAIK, a byte is always 8-bits. [edit] I just saw the reference to the article that said there used to be 6-bit bytes, but today's byte is 8-bits in length. [/edit] I believe UTF-16 uses a 16-bit (i.e. 2 byte) "word". Hence, MBCS, DBCS, etc. refer to multi-byte, double-byte..., etc. /ravi My new year's resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | Freeware | Music ravib@ravib.com

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                • R Ravi Bhavnani

                  AFAIK, a byte is always 8-bits. [edit] I just saw the reference to the article that said there used to be 6-bit bytes, but today's byte is 8-bits in length. [/edit] I believe UTF-16 uses a 16-bit (i.e. 2 byte) "word". Hence, MBCS, DBCS, etc. refer to multi-byte, double-byte..., etc. /ravi My new year's resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | Freeware | Music ravib@ravib.com

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                  David Crow
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #14

                  Fair enough. I rarely deal with such things, so I was just mainly throwing it out on the table for further discussion.


                  "Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown

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                  • N NormDroid

                    you almost had me convinced ;P Blogless

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                    Blake Miller
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #15

                    And here I thought is was a contraction from the Old English - 'Byte Me!'

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                    • U User 1990498

                      Ok. Thanks. Is it possible to compress 8bits into a byte using RLC( Run-Length Coding)?

                      J Offline
                      J Offline
                      John M Drescher
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #16

                      No, to compress with rle you need at minimum 4 bytes (32 bits). I assume you read the article at http://www.arturocampos.com/ac_rle.html[^] about RLE. I also believe it explains rle compression pretty well. Do you have any specific questions about the article or rle? Is your problem homework or for some other purpose? I ask this because rle is definitly not the best algorithm to use. And there are several source code compression libraries that you can download and use for free. John

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