At 03:33 PM 2/9/00 -0500, Joshua N Pritikin wrote: >On Wed, Feb 09, 2000 at 01:24:59PM -0700, tchrist@chthon.perl.com wrote: > > >I prefer octets, as that is what all the RFC's seem to call them. > > > > Si on a envie de parler non-anglais, alors bien, mais pour > > les autres, you have to admit that bytes is more what people > > are used to pensing about. > >My sense is that, "octet" is a snobbish jargonesque word for "byte." >With respect to "ascii," does everyone know that ascii characters are >always bytes? Certainly "bytes" are always bytes, so "bytes" would seem >hard to misinterpret. When the RFCs first started coming out, bytes weren't always 8 bits, though, hence octet. Not that perl runs on any TOPS-20 machines (does it?), but byte has historically ranged between 6 and 9 bits depending on the machine you were on. Dan --------------------------------------"it's like this"------------------- Dan Sugalski even samurai dan@sidhe.org have teddy bears and even teddy bears get drunkThread Previous | Thread Next