Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!news-out.readnews.com!transit4.readnews.com!panix!not-for-mail From: Grant Edwards Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: A few questiosn about encoding Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:44:55 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: c-24-118-110-103.hsd1.mn.comcast.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1371307495 7322 24.118.110.103 (15 Jun 2013 14:44:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:44:55 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.9p1 (Linux) Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:48303 On 2013-06-15, Denis McMahon wrote: > On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:58:20 +0300, Nick the Gr33k wrote: > >> On 14/6/2013 1:14 ????, Cameron Simpson wrote: >>> Normally a character in a b'...' item represents the byte value >>> matching the character's Unicode ordinal value. > >> The only thing that i didn't understood is this line. >> First please tell me what is a byte value > > Seriously? You don't understand the term byte? And you're the support > desk for a webhosting company? Well, we haven't had this thread for a week or so... There is some ambiguity in the term "byte". It used to mean the smallest addressable unit of memory (which varied in the past -- at one point, both 20 and 60 bit "bytes" were common). These days the smallest addressable unit of memory is almost always 8 bits on desktop and embedded processors (but often not on DSPs). That's why when IEEE stadards want to refer to an 8-bit chunk of data they use the term "octet". :)