``Octect'' vs. ``Byte''

Why do some autists get so worked up over the difference between the two terms? They mean the same fucking thing.

i think in ancient history days a "byte" may not have been exactly 8 bits across systems

>>2
oh yeah, back in the old days when lisp wasn't a shit tier language

It's ``Octet'', not ``Octect''.

And by the way: I also use the term nibble...

cocktet

>>5
YOU'RE SO FUCKING CLEVER

>>1
Clever trolling OP. You really know what riles 'em up.
THEY'RE NOT THE SAME THING. BOTH HAVE COMPLETELY SEPARATE DEFINITIONS.

>>6
wanna nibble on my cocktet?

>>4
So I made a typo, big fucking deal. No need to get all autistic about it.

Bytes are 8 bit wide, get over it you fucking faggots.

>>10
So is your mom.

What is a word?

>>12
Machine-dependant.

>>12
a miserable little pile of letters

>>7
Yeah, sure. Also, the correct terms for data volume is kibioctets, mebioctets and so on.

Also, I went to Wikipedia and lold at:

It is used primarily in its decadic fraction, the decibel (dB), for signal strength and sound pressure level measurements, while a unit for one tenth of a byte, i.e. the decibyte, is never used.^{_{[citation needed]}}

>>15
What?

Octet: 8 bits
Byte: Smallest addressable section of memory

By the way, does anyone if a char, int and long are always a byte, word and dword respectively. If so, why weren't they named as such?

>>16
Only char is guaranteed to be a byte.
Short and int are guaranteed to be at least 16-bits, and long is guaranteed to be at least 32-bits. Also, it is guaranteed that ((sizeof(short) <= sizeof(int)) && (sizeof(int) <= sizeof(long))).

Also, char is guaranteed to be at least 8-bits and you can get its exact length with the CHAR_BIT macro from limits.h.

>>16
Yeah, yeah, sure, there's a lot of imaginary architectures with non-8-bit bytes, don't throw an autistic tantrum please.

My point is that you guys don't go far enough. When you measure amount of information all units of measure should derive from the number of bits. Because information is measured in bits, not in "smallest addressable sections of memory".

So it is incorrect to say that some file size is 600 mebibytes, because it leaves undefined the actual number of bits in it. A 600 mebioctet file would take approximately 685 mebibytes on a 7-byte system. THIS IS WRONG.

So I urge all autismal asspies to head to Wikipedia and start a grassroots movement for deprecation of terms kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, and so on, in favour of kibioctet, mebioctet, gibioctet, and so on. There should be no doubt that you will succeed, after all you did manage to force everyone to use these retarded prefixes in the first place. "Octet" at least doesn't sound like the Teletubbies' favourite brand of anal lubricants.

>>19
There is nothing wrong with the current definitions. If a system was developed which, say, had 16 bit bytes they would become useful. Just now they are essentially synonymous.

It isn't nessecarily wrong to say a file is x bytes either, as long as you know the number of bits in a byte on the architecture the file was created.

Consider our hypothetical architecture again. To get octets of a file created on our current architectures you would probably do:
char ch = getchar();
octet1 = (ch >> 0) & 0xFF
octet2 = (ch >> 8) & 0xFF
Yes, I know this system does not exist.

I've never heard kibi, mebi, or gibi as prefixes before. They are indeed retarded.

>>20
What's bad about that is that sizeof(char) still will be 1.

>>19
don't throw an autistic tantrum please.

[snip autistic tantrum]

>>21
How is that a bad thing? char is still 1 byte, it's just that the size of a byte has changed.

>>21
But CHAR_BIT would be 16. I still don't see an issue.

We've managed just fine with different endianess, haven't we?

Likely an 8-bit byte file format would become standard if a non-8-bit byte architecture was to become popular, at least until that number of bits took a considerabe amount of market share.

The byte type being called char in C is a misnomer. Far better if the types were byte, word, dword, qword. Then you could write
word int = 4;
byte string[15];
and not have your intent clouded behind opague type names.
Though perhaps I am wrong on this. I don't know nearly enough of the details or the mindset of the standardising comittee.

>>20
It isn't nessecarily wrong to say a file is x bytes either, as long as you know the number of bits in a byte on the architecture the file was created.
No, on the architecture some particular copy of it is currently stored. Because obviously it would have to be re-encoded if you move it to another architecture, which would change its size.

Measuring file size in bytes is just as wrong as measuring file size in sectors, from the autist's viewpoint. It's not a property of the file, but only on one particular incarnation of it. So it is WRONG to call this value "file size".

Then, when you create other copies this number might change, and to know how it would change you'll need to translate the first pseudo-size to real size in bits, then translate back to the second pseudo-size. As opposed to using the real size all along, and translating it only once in those rare cases when you need to know the size in platform-depended units.

So if you are a proper, self-respecting autist, you simply can't stop at decrying the use of the word "byte" to mean "octet" in the extremely narrow class of programming-related situations. It is INCONSISTENT to demand everyone to loop to CHAR_BIT but sheepishly measure file sizes in mibibytes.

It's like putting on lipstick, eye shadow, and glittering leggings, heading to a gay bar, but then refusing to suck any cocks. It completely destroys your credibility, it means that you are not a real gay or autist, but only pretend to be one because it's hip.

>>24
I don't know nearly enough of the details or the mindset of the standardising comittee.
Their mindset was altered by something called LSD.

>>17
Short and int are guaranteed to be at least 16-bits, and long is guaranteed to be at least 32-bits.

Close, but no cigar. Reread the standard again. And when you do, pay much closer attention this time. BTW, I'm still not granting your monkey ass the first technical interview.

>>25
I wouldn't say measuring it in bytes is wrong. To meaningfully deserialize it on a machine with different byte size, the encoded byte size would still have to be known. So it makes sense you would need either a (file size in bytes, byte size in bits) or (file size in bits, byte size in bits) pair. Either can be derived from the other two.

It still "isn't nessecarily wrong to say a file is x bytes either, as long as you know the number of bits in a byte on the architecture the file was created." The point I was trying to make is, it currently makes no difference. For all intents and purposes, right now a byte is an octet.

I appreciate where you're coming from, trying to put it into it's simplest and most intuitive form. I'm arguing the opposite to show you that it isn't wrong either.

This is remarkably similar to the Pi/Tau debate.

>>25
Measuring file size in bytes is just as wrong as measuring file size in sectors, from the autist's viewpoint. It's not a property of the file

Cripes, I think you need to go read "The Design and Implementation of the 4.2 BSD Operating System" instead of acting like the stupid nowhere bitch that you reallly are.

It's like putting on lipstick, eye shadow, and glittering leggings, heading to a gay bar, but then refusing to suck any cocks. It completely destroys your credibility, it means that you are not a real gay or autist, but only pretend to be one because it's hip.

Go serve another customer.

>>25
Why is this site so obsessed with all things gay?

>>30
Because 95% of the people here, who happen to be dudes, are either scared of women, or have been turned down by so many females that their only option was to turn to all things gay.

>>30
I don't know.

>>28
So it makes sense you would need either a (file size in bytes, byte size in bits) or (file size in bits, byte size in bits) pair.
No, I would actually need a triplet (their byte size in bits, their file size in bytes, my byte size in bits). This is unscientific and ultimately destructive. Replacing "byte" with "octet" immediately solves the problem, even if the "smallest addressable sections of memory" is not 8 bits on any or both of our machines.

Which by the way happens waaay more often than you think, in fact x86 is one of the few processor families which can do singe byte reads/writes, not to mention unaligned reads/writes, and even it gradually goes away from it (x86-64 demands stack pointer to be 8-byte aligned, SSE demands 16-byte aligned data and don't provide any single-byte manipulation instructions). Somehow no one uses a different byte size on those other architectures.

For all intents and purposes, right now a byte is an octet.
Then what you are doing here, in this discussion, on this board?

>right now a byte is an octet.
However in TROLLGOL this is not the case, due backward comp. with legacy systems

>>31
The other 5% are trannies and asexuals?

Also, fuck you you fucking autists. Byte=octet and that's final. fuck your shitty microcontrollers.

>>35
Tell it to the ANSI C Standard.

>>36
Fuck off and die you little cocksucking queer, Zhivago.

>>37
ZHIVAGO THREAD

<Zhivago> No. Eclipse can ruin an evening on any planet.
<michaelis> Maybe so. But you have to admit that many people out there depend on it.
<Zhivago> Many people depended on beating black people to death.
<Zhivago> That doesn't make it right.
<michaelis> No, they think they did. That's a big difference.
<Zhivago> michaelis: No. They did. It was an integral part of the economy.
<michaelis> Zhivago: I'll be very interested in learning more on that subject another day. Good evening for now.
* michaelis has quit (Quit: Leaving)

Manual memory management proponents love caressing and nibbling on every cocktet they allocate.

nipples