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From: lamy@ai.toronto.edu
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: How do you say "byte" in French?
Message-ID: <8612041930.AA23572@ephemeral.ai>
Date: Thu, 4-Dec-86 14:50:59 EST
Article-I.D.: ephemera.8612041930.AA23572
Posted: Thu Dec  4 14:50:59 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Dec-86 15:26:29 EST
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Organization: University of Toronto, AI group
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Checksum: 06850


"byte", when used a a measure of memory capacity, usually means 8 useable
bits, and gets translated as "octet".  Memory should be measured in bits, or
maybe in characters (maybe this is where the confusion comes from, since often
1 char <= 1 byte).  

Even the notion of "byte" makes little sense since it no longer corresponds to
the width of the data paths, to processor register size.  It may be useful
when talking of the different lenghts of instructions, but I need to be
convinced...

"multiplet" is more general, and applies to the 9bit PDP-10 and the 6bit
CDC "bytes".

Jean-Francois Lamy
AI Group, Dept of Computer Science     CSNet: lamy@ai.toronto.edu
University of Toronto		       EAN:   lamy@ai.toronto.cdn
Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1A4	       UUCP:  lamy@utai.uucp